Page 162 of Nightshade

White tendrils of fabric dancing around her sleeping face, as she lay in the water. Collapsing beside her and cursing the heavens. Pain. Unimaginable pain tearing through my heart like barbed flail to my ribs. Fire and screams. Lightning and blood. So much blood. Whispers in her ear. Running my fingers over the sigil. A promise. A vow of undying determination.

All the memories of my past falling perfectly into place in the timeline inside my mind. I could piece the before and after without the blackness. Without the hollow feeling of something missing. The void had filled to the brim and spilled over with every agonizing moment.

A voice echoed inside my head. “She is cursed. To be reborn. Again. And again.” The words of Bishop Venable. At the thought of him, an ancient hatred stirred from a dark and otherwise impenetrable place inside of me.

My gaze fell upon the girl that lay on the bed. Farryn. Only that was not her name. A fist of shock tightened around my lungs.

I dropped to my knees beside the bed and studied her face. Every feature that shared an inarguable likeness. A perfect replica of the girl from my past. So beautiful and unmarred, she didn’t seem real.

Was it possible? Could the heavens be so merciful as to give back what they’d stolen from me? Surely not after what I’d done. The revenge I’d taken. The lives mutilated in her name.

I lifted her hand to my face, smelling the sweet scent of her skin that took me back to my youth. “Lustina,” I whispered and kissed her palm.

An ache throbbed deep inside my chest. At first, I didn’t recognize the thump of my own heart stirring back to life, beating for something again.

Lustina! Her name was an answered prayer on my lips. The first breath after having been buried alive in my pain. My fists burned with the urge to lift her from the bed and steal her away to a place where no one in the world would ever find her. My Lustina. Returned to me at last.

There wasn’t a force in this world, or any other, that would take her from me again.

51

Jericho

Ten years ago …

New Haven, Connecticut

Books clutched against her chest, the girl shuffled with brisk steps along the sidewalk, glancing over her shoulder every so often, as if she sensed me stalking behind her. At only fifteen, she was still a bit young for me, but she’d already begun to blossom with feminine curves and sharp wit. Even so, it was her innocence that reminded me most of the girl from my past.

Lustina.

Only, her new name, the one she’d been born with, was Farryn. My chest throbbed and ached for her. That I could swipe her up at any moment, without her father ever knowing what’d happened to her, was a temptation that had hounded me every day since her birth.

I would wait, though.

I’d waited millennia to see her face again, a few more years wouldn’t kill me.

Her ambrosial scent carried on the air, watering my mouth--the sweet aroma of vitality. I longed for the day when I would taste it on her lips and breathe it in.

The short skirt of her uniform swayed with her steps, drawing focus to her long, slim legs. An irritation which goaded me to cover her up, so no one else would look at her that way.

Someone had taken notice, though.

The older man she’d passed, who sat on a bus stop bench. I watched his tongue wet his lips as he eyed her up and down and squeezed his groin. Staring after her, he sat forward, as if he might have had the audacity to follow her.

I wanted nothing more than to flick the pissant off into the stratosphere. Instead, I mentally willed a sharp and excruciating pain to his groin. A sensation akin to my having twisted his balls up into his throat while snapping a thousand rubber bands along his dick shaft. The man doubled over on a yelp and, hand cupped to his crotch, slid to his knees, as I passed him. I smirked, watching his face turn an unhealthy shade of purple. Much as I’d loved to have snapped his neck while I was at it, I couldn’t mess things up. Up until that point, I’d gone unnoticed by the other Sentinels. Even thinking of killing an innocent had probably put me on their radar.

By the time I arrived at Farryn's house, she’d already made her way inside.

Screams reached my ears. Her screams. Fearful screams.

Muscles steeled, I stormed inside the small bungalow and followed the sound up to the second level.

Swinging open the bathroom door showed her father on his knees beside the tub, holding her underwater. On a rush of fury and adrenaline, I charged toward him. Time around me came to a screeching halt.

Augustus held his arms outstretched. Splashes of water held suspended in the air. Farryn’s hands held tight to her father’s.

“What an absolute freak.”