Page 16 of Illusory (The Marked Saga #8)
I woke up disoriented and alone on the cold, marble floor with a pounding headache that made me wish I was dead. It took my brain several heartbeats to catch up to my eyes and recognize that I was still in Nikki’s house, and then a few more beats for the memory of what had happened to flood back in to swallow me.
I shot up into a seated position, wincing from the throbbing pain in my head as I searched around the foyer for the hell-born creatures that had seemingly saved my life.
Only there wasn’t anybody there but me. No Revenants. No Hellhounds. No scattered body parts strung about the room like confetti. Had it not been for the splattering of blood smeared all over the pristine glass endowed foyer, I might have even wondered if I had dreamt the whole thing up.
Sheathing the blade that was somehow still in my grasp, I braced my hands against the tiled floor and then wrestled myself back up to my feet, my body screaming in protest against the effort. I had no idea how long I had been out or what time it even was. The only thing I knew was that literally every inch of my body hurt, from my ankles to my butt to the strands of my dang hair, and I was grateful as hell for every bit of it because by some unconceivable miracle, I was still alive to feel it.
How exactly that had happened, however, remained a mystery that I’d have to solve some other time—when I was far away from Nikki’s House of Horrors.
Limping to the front door, I turned the knob and yanked it open. The crisp night air rushed in to greet me like the icy hands of death. I shivered against the wind and then pulled at the shredded remains of my coat, doing my best to bundle up with it. The zipper had been ripped away and one of the sleeves was hanging on by a single stitch, but it was better than nothing. Holding it closed with one hand, I hobbled back to my car.
The moon was hanging low in the distance, letting me know it was well past the fifteen minutes I’d planned on being at Nikki’s house, but other than that, I had no idea how long I’d been off the grid. Climbing into my car, I turned the engine and immediately reached for my phone.
58 missed calls.
Shit. Shit. Shit .
Seeing as my sister was more than half of those missed calls, I had no doubt that Ben had freaked out when I didn’t show up at his house and reached out to my sister. I could practically taste the third-degree wrath I was going to get the second I walked through my front door. As much as I wanted to avoid that whole mess and take the super long scenic way home, I knew better than to play with fire.
Throwing my gear shift into drive, I drove my battered ass straight home.
* * *
The agonizing hobble up the front steps of the Blackburn Estate didn’t hold a flame to what I was greeted with on the other side of the door. Tessa was in the hallway pacing back and forth as Caleb stood off to the side, talking heatedly to someone on his phone.
I could instantly tell by their pinched eyebrows and rigid expressions that they were both worried sick about me.
“Lucy, I’m home,” I announced in a strained voice as I shut the front door behind myself and faced the firing squad.
Tessa and Caleb immediately stopped what they were doing and turned to look at me, gaping for what felt like an eternity. It was nice that my face had that effect on people.
“What the hell happened to you?” shrieked Tessa, her eyes running rampant over me as she inspected my battered face and torn, blood-spattered clothing. “Who did this?”
I opened my mouth to answer her, but nothing came out. I wasn’t sure where to start, and frankly, I felt a little embarrassed by the whole thing now that I was standing in the safety of my house again. I’d brought it on myself, and I knew that perfectly well, but it was still going to suck hearing it all over again from her.
“Yeah, she’s back. She’s right here,” said Caleb to whoever he had been talking to and then promptly ended the call without waiting for their response. “Damn, Blackburn. You look like hell.”
“Thanks.” I didn’t bother telling him that I felt even worse than I looked. Instead, I tossed my keys on the console and tried to shuck my coat off. Tried being the operative word. My achy bones and bruised muscles fought me like their salvation depended on it. Like refusing me was their only chance at survival.
I gave up three seconds later and frowned.
“Here. Let me get that.” Caleb shuffled forward and grabbed the top of my coat before carefully peeling the shredded fabric off my shoulders and then dragging it down my arms before stepping back with it. The coat nearly came apart in his hands as he held it against his abdomen and stared down at me with pity in his eyes. “Fuck,” he hissed under his breath as he gave his head a small shake.
My gaze followed his and I grimaced as I took myself in. The reddish-brown stains soaking through my white shirt. The garish bruises on my arms. My torn jeans, wet with blood and slobber and lord only knew what else. I looked as though I’d been run over by a train and somehow managed to walk away from it.
I needed to heal.
And to shower.
And to sleep for a hundred years.
“Where’s Gabriel?” I asked, my voice fraught with anguish. Gabriel could heal me. Gabriel could make all the hurt and trauma go away before it had a chance to settle in and scar me for life.
“Where do you think he is?” answered Tessa, her words poignant and purposeful like I should already know the answer to that. “He’s out looking for you. Everyone is.”
I crooked a swollen eyebrow at her as my heart rate quickened. “ Everyone ?”
“Well, everyone that isn’t currently in the throes of bloodlust,” she clarified, letting me know Trace was not part of the search party, and thank God for that. He didn’t need another reason to think badly of me. “Ben’s been out there looking for you since the second you stopped answering his texts, and Jackie, Gabriel, and Dominic took off as soon as the sun set. We were just about to try a locator spell on you when you walked through the door.”
My mind tripped on his name and stayed there. “You called Dominic?”
“Of course I called him.”
Sadness crept into my chest and then twisted its way up my throat, making it difficult for me to swallow.
After my last conversation with him, it had been made perfectly clear to me that Dominic didn’t feel the same way about me anymore. He was trying to keep his distance, and I wanted to respect that, no matter how much it made me feel like I couldn’t breathe the way I used to. Tessa dragging him into my drama was the last thing he probably wanted.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” I said, unable to hide the note of sadness in my tone.
“Like hell.” She crossed her arms. “He was the first phone call I made, and with good reason. No one had any idea what happened to you. If anybody knew, or could at least find out, it’s Dominic.”
Well, I couldn’t really argue that point. Mostly because I didn’t have the energy to do it or the words to explain how painful it was to even mention his name anymore. Instead, I started down the hallway, needing something cold and sweet to wash away the taste of blood from my mouth. Tessa and Caleb exchanged a quick glance and then followed behind as I limped my way to the kitchen.
89 years later, I reached the fridge and pulled out a container of orange juice, ignoring the throbbing pain shooting out from my arm and shoulder from the simple task. Sucking in a deep breath, I contemplated staggering over to the cabinet to fetch myself a glass for the juice and then quickly decided it wasn’t worth the extra effort. The container would do just fine.
Twisting off the cap, I gingerly brought it up to my lips and then tipped my head back.
Ew! What in the name of expired-tasting-shit was this ?
The gnarly mixture of blood and orange juice defiled my mouth, nearly causing me to spit my mouthful out across the room. And I probably would have done it too had my cakehole not been swollen to twice its size. Scanning the container to make sure it wasn’t actually expired, I forced myself to swallow my mouthful. Well, most of it anyway. The rest just dribbled down my chin like a teething infant.
“Are you going to tell us what happened?” asked Tessa when I finally stopped gagging on the aftertaste of the bloody cocktail still assaulting my mouth. “Where were you?”
I met her worried eyes and faltered. As much as it shamed me to admit what had happened tonight, I knew I owed my sister an explanation. “I went to Nikki’s house.”
“ What?” Tessa gawped at me like it was the absolute last thing she ever expected me to say. I guess that made two of us. “As in the antichrist’s personal incubator?”
“Is that what we’re calling her now?” I snorted and then winced from the pain.
“Please tell me you’re joking,” she said without a lick of amusement on her face. “This has to be a joke because I know there’s no way you did something that stupid.”
“Oh, you have no idea about the levels of stupidity I could reach when I put my mind to it.”
“Christ, Jemma!”
“Did she do this to you?” asked Caleb, his face all scrunched up with shock and disbelief, like he expected me to be able to take her. I appreciated the sentiment.
“No.” I shook my head. “She wasn’t even there.”
The sound of the front door crashing open interrupted us before I could say anything more. It was just as well. I really didn’t want to have to recount the story all over again once the others made it back.
Feeling the sense of shame creep in again, I dropped my head and stared at the floor as the stampede of footsteps rushed down the hallway and then into the kitchen before coming to an abrupt stop.
No doubt they were all gawking at me.
“Fucking hell,” said Ben, his voice barely above a hiss. “What the hell happened to you, Jem?”
Swallowing against the ache in my throat, I lifted my eyes. Gabriel, Jackie and Ben stood in a messy line with horrified expressions on their faces. I already knew I looked bad, I’d checked my face in the car mirror before coming inside the house, but I imagined the bruising and swelling was getting exponentially worse with every passing second.
I couldn’t help but notice that Dominic wasn’t there. He’d probably gone back to whatever he had been doing when he found out that I was back home. She really shouldn’t have called him.
“She was just about to tell us exactly what in God’s name possessed her to go to Nikki’s house of all places, and why her face looks like she went twelve rounds with a bear,” announced Tessa, her sharp grey eyes fixed on me expectantly.
Gabriel shoved forward and rushed to my side, putting his hand on my shoulder and the small of my back and then guiding me to the table. “Here, sit down,” he instructed as he pulled out a chair for me. “Someone get me a first aid kit.”
“It’s fine,” I said, waving him off as I shakily lowered myself into the chair. I had no interest in ointment and bandages. I needed the good stuff. The vampire stuff.
Jackie blurred out of the room anyway and quickly returned with a first aid kit in her hands. She dropped it on the table in front of me and then stepped back, not saying or doing anything else. Still gunning for that Mother Of The Year award.
“I don’t understand, Jem,” said Ben as he ambled closer to me. Apparently, he and Gabriel were the only ones not afraid of getting too close to me. “Why would you go see Nikki of all people?”
How the hell was I going to explain this one?
“I just…I needed to warn her about the Roderick sisters. About what Morgan saw ,” I finally admitted, deciding to lay down my arms and face the fallout. “I know it might not make sense to any of you, but from the second Morgan told me about her vision, about what the Roderick sisters were planning to do, I’ve had this uncontrollable urge to warn Nikki about what was coming. I couldn’t shake it no matter what I did.”
“So, instead of mentioning this to us, you decide to run off by yourself and go toe-to-toe with the Devil’s concubine instead?” asked Tessa, like she couldn’t believe I’d do something so reckless. But like, did she just meet me?
“It wasn’t like that,” I said and then winced as Gabriel poured antiseptic into one of the wounds on my shoulder. “I wasn’t planning on facing off with her. This was about the baby—about warning her about what Morgan saw in her vision. I felt like maybe if she knew what was coming, she could do something to stop it. She could change the course of his life. Of all of our lives.”
“And how did that work out for you?” she asked, crossing her arms as she flicked her gaze up and down my bruised and battered body. “Did you have a good talk?”
“No, smartass. She was already gone,” I said, drinking down the suffocating feeling of doom that kept creeping up from the hollows of my chest. Maybe if I’d have listened to the pull sooner, things might have worked out differently, but I supposed I’d never really know.
“Then the Roderick sisters already got to her?” asked Gabriel, pausing over the wound he was cleaning.
“It’s looking that way,” I said, trying not to sound as discouraged as I felt.
“You mean to tell me that this thing that’s been prophesied for millennia is now on course to play out exactly as it was foretold? Well, that’s a shocker,” said Tessa in a tone that was precisely the opposite of shocked.
It was her giant ‘I told you so’ in my face but I took it on the chin, knowing I had it coming. I didn’t bother telling her that I had yet to buy into the whole prophesy thing yet. Something about not being in control of our own destiny—of not being able to choose our own path—just didn’t sit right with me.
“I know you think it was stupid and pointless, but I had to do it…I had to at least try .”
“So, if Nikki wasn’t at her house when you got there then who did this to you?” asked Ben as he leaned his hip against the kitchen table and fiddled with his piercing, frowning at my bruised face.
“That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it?” said Dominic, suddenly standing in the entryway of the kitchen, his arms crossed along his chest and a dark, sullen look in his eyes.
Despite the disapproving look and his barely tepid greeting, the only thing I wanted to do just then was run to him and bury myself so deep into his arms that he’d never be able to detach from me.
Of course, I didn’t, but I really fucking wanted to.
He shifted on his foot but didn’t move after that. “You were saying?”
“Right,” I started and then promptly dropped my eyes, feeling the lick of shame nipping at my heels again. “Well, like I said, Nikki wasn’t there, but I’m pretty sure the Roderick sisters knew I was coming and decided to leave me a parting gift for my efforts.” I glanced up at Dominic.
“Revenants?” he guessed.
“Three of them along with their pet Hellhounds.”
His jaw tensed into steel.
“Woah. Hellhounds?” rasped Caleb and then ran his hand through his already messed up hair like he was struggling to absorb the information.
“Are you sure that’s what you saw?” asked Gabriel, his eyebrows pinched as he dropped his arm to his lap and left it there. “Could they have been regular dogs?”
“Sure…if you know of any dogs with hunched backs and glowing red eyes.” My eyes drifted to Dominic again. His expression remained indifferent, like we were discussing what to order for lunch tomorrow.
“And how many did you say there were?” asked Gabriel, drawing my attention back to him.
“Four.”
His perturbed expression deepened, like I’d just told him I’d just solved the theory of dark matter. Like the words that were coming out of my mouth were impossible.
“And you fought them all? Four Hellhounds and three Revenants?” he went on and then exchanged a look with Tessa before I could clarify anything. It was never a good sign when he did that.
Something was up.
“What aren’t you saying? Why are you acting like it’s impossible?” I asked, suddenly feeling offended, curious, and suspicious all at once. I mean, sure, technically I didn’t fight them all, and I certainly didn’t defeat them. I was as good as dead had it not been for, well, whatever the hell happened back there. But he didn’t know that yet.
My gaze slid to Dominic again, searching his eyes for some kind of reaction, some kind of recognition of the man I loved. But still, I got nothing.
“It’s just that Hellhounds have always been believed to be in another class altogether. Besting one of them is one thing, though there aren’t many records of it happening. But four of them.” Gabriel started to shake his head as though he couldn’t stand to have the absurd thought in his head for a second longer. “Rumor has it that once they’ve made you their mark, they don’t stop until the job is done, and if one gets taken out, another quickly replaces it.”
Ice-cold terror shot down my back. What in the name of Unsolved Mysteries happened back there? If what he was saying was true, then it was essentially impossible that some unknown person blipped in to save me and then disappeared before I could thank them. Which, now that I was out of danger and back in my right mind, sounded utterly ridiculous the more I thought about it.
But if some random person didn’t swoop in to save me, then that could only mean one thing.
The Hellhounds did. And then…they let me go.
But why? Why would a pack of Hellhounds go from mauling me one minute, to saving my life the next? Why would they let me walk away from that ambush when everything everyone knew about them said that wasn’t possible. That they never left unfinished business.
Something dark and disturbing slithered just below the surface of my awareness, making my heart race and my stomach twist with knots. Biting my swollen lip, I looked up and met Dominic’s eyes again. His own were slightly narrowed and trained on me as though he were hard at work decoding some puzzle hidden in my eyes.
“So, does that mean they’re going to come for her again?” asked Tessa, stealing my attention again.
I wanted to ease her mind and tell her that they weren’t coming. That they had seen something so dark and corroded in me that they decided I should instead be spared. But I couldn’t get my lips to move anymore. I couldn’t stomach the looks of fear and confusion and disgust that would inevitably come once I told them what really happened.
“It’s hard to say,” answered Gabriel, though his eyes were still trained on me. “How exactly did you vanquish them? I assume you used the sword on all four?” he asked, searching my face for clues. Digging deeper and deeper in his quest to unearth the truth.
I wanted to answer him; to tell him the lie he needed to hear to drop the whole thing, but it was as though my tongue had been glued to the roof of my mouth.
“Jemma?” he prompted.
“Of course she did,” answered Dominic, his voice reaching out across the room to caress me. “She doesn’t go anywhere without it. Isn’t that right, angel?” he said, nodding into it as if coaxing me to follow suit.
Unable to look away from him, I simply nodded.
“There you have it.” A small lopsided smile curled across his lips, making my heart dance in my chest again. Making me feel as though I could finally breathe again at just the sight of it.
“Now, if you’ll all excuse us, I think she’s answered enough questions for the night,” he said and then sauntered across the kitchen toward me, his dark eyes as hard as granite when he came to a stop before me and held out his hand. “Let’s get you all fixed up and better, shall we?”
As if he even had to ask.