Page 36 of Irreverent (The Marked Saga #7)

A hundred years came and went before Dominic’s words fully registered. It was like that out-of-body moment right before impact, where you see everything happening in slow motion just before it all slams together in your face. And yet, I couldn’t seem to absorb it, to take it in as gospel.

I shook my head, the movement abrupt and filled with violence. “You’re lying to me.”

He had to be because he couldn’t possibly be saying what I thought he was saying.

“Am I?”

he challenged. “You know as much as anyone else that you cannot cheat death.”

“But he already did!”

I argued as though debating with Dominic was going to make a lick of difference in the grand scheme of things. He wasn’t the gate keep, but I needed to yell at someone.

“Hardly,”

he said as he set the glass on the floor and then slid it back over to me. “Romeo may have temporarily bypassed his death with the help of his Single White Female, but his debt is still withstanding. And death always comes to collect.”

A shudder broke out over my body.

“There is only one true way to stop what is coming.”

He sat up a little straighter. “I am living proof of that.”

“By Turning,”

I said on a breathless whisper. There wasn’t enough air in the dank-ass basement to fill my lungs anymore. The room was beginning to dip and bend around me, threatening to take me asunder.

“Ironic, isn’t it?”

he mused as he cocked his head to the side in merry contemplation. “The only thing that can save your knight in shining armor is to turn him into the thing he loathes most. It’s almost poetic.”

“Fuck you!”

I ground out as my body trembled from the surge of emotions rocketing through me.

“Ouch. That hurt,”

he said, feigning offense. “But I don’t make the rules, angel.”

“There has to be another way. This can’t be my only option.”

“If there was, I would have found it years ago,”

he said, though I was barely listening to him then.

As if on cue, that strange message from Morgan’s vision rushed into my consciousness and stole what was left of my breath: The path to transcendence is birthed in transformation.

Suddenly, that pointless, scrambled-ass message made perfect sense as it fit in almost seamlessly with what Dominic had been saying. But then why would Morgan have received a divine message telling us to turn one of our own into a Revenant? Wasn’t that going completely against everything Anakim stood for?

Something wasn’t adding up, but I couldn’t figure out what it was.

Grabbing the knife and glass, I pushed off the ground and straightened.

“Where are you going?”

asked Dominic, his tone almost sounding disappointed.

“I need to figure this out. I need to…I need to find Gabriel,”

I said as I rushed out of the cell, making sure to lock it back up behind me before bolting out of there. I vaguely heard Dominic saying something to me as I dashed across the basement and up the stairs, but I was far too wrapped up in my head to hear it.

Gabriel would be the voice of reason.

Gabriel would help me sort out all the scattered pieces until they made sense.

Because…he had to.

***

To my utter relief, Gabriel showed up less than ten minutes after I’d called him. That was the thing I appreciated most about him. I could always count on him to drop absolutely anything he had going on and show up for me when I needed him the most. Not that I had any idea what he had going on during his free time, but that’s completely beside the point.

“I’m here. What happened?”

he asked as he barreled into the living room, his eyes surveying my person and everything around me as though he were walking into a hostage situation.

I hadn’t been able to explain anything to him on the phone call. Mostly because I couldn’t put the words together in my head. How could I? According to Dominic, Trace was slowly dying and the only thing I could do to save him also happened to be the one thing he might never actually forgive me for.

I was between a rock and the bottom of the ocean, and I was drowning.

When he saw that the coast was clear and that my emergency was more of an emotional one, he relaxed his shoulders and then came to sit beside me. “Jemma…what happened?”

I could feel the burning sting of tears trying to break free under my lids, but I bared down and forced them back. Now wasn’t the time to start crying. My tears weren’t going to save anyone and certainly not Trace.

I looked up and met his worried eyes, my own forlorn and pleading. “He’s dying, isn’t he?”

His brows knitted together in confusion. “Who is?”

“Trace.”

I swallowed against the thick knot of sorrow building up at the back of my throat. Everything after that came out in a panicked rush. “Nikki tried to cheat death by bringing him back, but it was only temporary. The spell was keeping him alive and now that it’s gone, death is slowly coming for him, isn’t it?”

He didn’t say anything.

“Answer me, Gabriel. Please, just…just tell me the truth.”

“I don’t have an answer for that, Jemma. We don’t know anything for certain until—”

“Until what?”

I cut in, my voice pained and elevated. “Until it’s too late to do anything about it?”

He exhaled a heavy breath but didn’t dispute my argument. Not a good sign.

“Dominic said there’s only one way to truly save him,”

I said, putting it out there despite every fiber of my being telling me to bury it—to suffocate the idea before it had a chance to take a breath.

The air in the room thinned with tension.

“Is he right? Is Turning him the only way to bring him back from this?”

He met my pleading eyes and then frowned as though he couldn’t bring himself to say it. “Tessa is going through the books as we speak. If there’s a way, she will find it.”

“But if there was a way, wouldn’t we have already found it? Wouldn’t Dominic have come across it? Wouldn’t the Order have a record of it somewhere?”

The answer was right there in front of my face and in the deepest part of my heart, I knew the truth, but I needed to hear it from someone else’s mouth first. I needed to hear it from someone I trusted.

His shoulders were stiff with tension as he stared back at me, searching my eyes for something before they finally slumped. “I would have to assume so, yes.”

My thoughts were swirling out of control, making it impossible for me to grab onto even one. Dominic had been telling me the truth. There was no way to stop what was coming other than by turning Trace into a vampire. Something he despised with every fiber of his being. But did he despise it enough to choose death over it?

How the hell could I possibly ever make that decision for him?

I couldn’t. No way, no how.

But then what was the alternative? Losing him again? Letting him slowly succumb to his death? My stomach roiled with nausea. And what about what William had said? He promised he was going to find a way to save him. He, more than anyone else, had to know that it was an impossible feat. Was he just lying to me? Stringing me along?

Nothing was making sense anymore and it was only making me feel dizzier and more confused. I turned to Gabriel again, my eyes trying to focus in on him and not on the whirling room around me.

“What would you do if you were in my position? Would you consider Turning someone you loved to save them?”

His frown deepened, creasing his forehead, and causing the thin skin around his eyes to crinkle. “I don’t know that I could make that choice for someone.”

My heart fell. It wasn’t the answer I was looking for.

“Do you hate Dominic? For what he did to you?”

I asked instead, gauging if this was even a redeemable act. Because despite my apprehension, I was still considering it.

“I did for a very long time,”

he said, his eyes becoming distant as though he had ventured back to a different time and place in his mind. “I despised what he had turned me into, but more than that, I hated that I could no longer reconcile my place in this world.”

I swallowed the two-by-four at the back of my throat. “And what about now?”

“And now, I have found a way to carry on.”

“So, you’ve forgiven him then?”

I asked, hanging onto his words as though they were the cure to my dying breath.

“In a way I suppose I have.”

A frown lined his forehead. “I don’t know that I will ever be able to fully forgive and forget, but I no longer hate him for it.”

A flicker of hope ignited in my heart. If Gabriel had been able to find a way to somewhat (at least partially) forgive Dominic for Turning him, then maybe that meant that Trace might be able to forgive me too.

If it had to come to that.

“We haven’t run out of time yet,”

reminded Gabriel, drawing my attention back to him. “Tessa is still out there searching through every piece of text at our disposal. You don’t have to make any decisions tonight.”

I nodded, though his words didn’t make me feel any better. The worry was still right there in the back of my mind, looming over me like an impending storm.

Sinking back against the couch, I silently prayed that Tessa would be able to unearth some buried magical solution that was going to save Trace in the nick of time, and that this entire conversation would be thrown right off the table, because the truth was, if it came down to life or death for Trace, I was always going to choose life.

“I hope to god she finds something,”

I said, already knowing what I had to do if she didn’t. “For his sake and mine.”