Cado (25 page)

As I stared up at Lucian, his visage so open and vulnerable, my heart clenched. He was fallen, the first fallen, the angel who had created Hell itself. He was unscrupulous, self-centered—a villain. But that’s the thing, unlike in books and movies, villains aren’t one dimensional. Sometimes they don’t even know they’re villains, or worse yet, they think they’re a hero. Their actions are motivated by positive emotions—love, devotion, and yet they do it all wrong. Somewhere along the line they became tainted, twisted. Was I a villain too? How would I know? Was it like sanity? The truly insane never question whether or not they are in fact sane, but the people of sound mind do question it all the time. So was I not a villain because I wondered if I was, or was it all bullshit? Maybe I had become just like Lucian.

“Why did you come to me as Jacob? Explain to me, Lucian.” My voice warbled with uncertainty. My mind briefly thought about the blade I had stashed nearby in one of my bags. Maybe I should plunge it into Lucian’s chest and then mine, to put us both out of our misery. Even with that thought, I made no move to get it. My body again serving as traitor to my mind.

“I wanted to see if you’d accept the same thing I was offering but from someone else.” Lucian’s sculpted jaw flexed with anger. “And you did. Nothing was different, all the promises the same, and yet you took from a man that you barely know, what I’ve been offering to you for centuries.” He pinned me with furious blue eyes. “Why?”

A tear slipped from my eye. “Oh, Lucian, don’t you see, it wasn’t the same at all. With your promises comes a price I’m not willing to pay.”

“The apocalypse?”

“Yes,” I breathed.

Lucian smiled sadly while stroking my face. “I’m sorry I had to deceive you in that way. It really was the only way. My brother hunts me, wants me dead. You left me—” His hand formed into a fist, resting against my neck. “You left me. All is fair in love and war,” he growled, his wings whipping out behind him as he stood.

“Which do you care more about? The love or the war?” Had I become a means to an end after all these years, a means to start the apocalypse? Maybe no real love lingered for me in Lucian. Maybe it’d died a long time ago and all that was left was the need for possession, and to win the battle he’d been fighting for so long.

“It’s always been about you. My love for you. Everything I’ve done since my fall has been for you. How many times do I need to tell you that before you believe it?”

Tears leaked from the corners of my eyes, slowly trailing down towards my ears. Lucian stole one with his fingertip and brought it to his lips. “I don’t want to be the cause of the apocalypse.” I choked back a sob. “I thought I could have a normal life with Jacob. I want a normal life, Lucian. I want—”

Lucian raised his eyebrows and gazed at me sardonically. “Yes, it would have been so normal for a cop to look the other way, to help you in your little game of—”

“It’s not a game!” I screeched, pushing up against him as I tried to rise.

Lucian grabbed my wrists and slammed me back into the bed. “It’s all a game,” he snarled. “One that I stacked heavily in my favor. The lies were a means to an end. Not you. Yes, I can tell what you’re thinking.”

“Ha!” I scoffed. “You’re the great deceiver. I shouldn’t have expected any less. I can’t love you! I can’t—”

“You’re angry. I can understand your current emotions. They will pass.”

“No, they won’t! This is all ridiculous. We fell in love in a past life. I’m not Nyssa, my memories of love for you are just that, memories. I’m not the same person, I’m not the same at—”

“I fell in love with your soul.” Lucian’s voice was low and dangerous, his eyes narrowed with fury. “You are more than flesh and blood. If you would have been born a man in this life, it wouldn’t have mattered to me. Your essence, who and what you truly are, what makes you,
you
—that’s what I fell in love with. That will never change even though your body, and your mind has. The flesh is weak—the soul is immortal.” He tightened his grip on me and pressed his body heavily into mine. “Your soul recognizes me as its match. You were drawn to Jacob last night because of it. You wanted me even though you thought I was someone else. Your soul sensed me even hidden away the way it was. That should tell you all you need to know.”

“I still don’t understand any of it. First you say you became Jacob to see if I’d accept things from him that I wouldn’t you and then you say I was drawn to him at all because it was you the whole time.” I was overwhelmed, confused, and wondering if I’d ever make sense of any of it.

Lucian’s expression softened. “Sometimes I forget that it’s hard for your human mind to grasp the things that I do.”

“That’s bullshit. You’re making excuses for your double talk.”

“No. It all makes sense if you think about it.” The corner of Lucian’s mouth tipped up as he regarded me.

My nostrils flared with agitation. “Tell me what you did to Jacob. I don’t know why but I need to know.” Maybe it was merely morbid curiosity, or maybe it was because I felt responsible for the death of a decent man. I didn’t kill good people, directly or indirectly, at least until now. I’d known from the beginning that getting involved with Jacob would end badly for him. It was my fault he was dead.

“Please, Lucian, I need to know.” I shook with anxiety.

Without a word, Lucian pulled me to him and I was swallowed by darkness.

I stood in Jacob’s apartment, watching like some kind of ghost, as he stripped off his Pittsburgh Police uniform.

Lucian appeared in front of him. “Jacob Moretti,” he purred. “I’ve come to collect a debt.”

Jacob stared, his face paler than it had been a few moments before. I could tell he was struggling to move, but he was frozen in place. “Who and what the fuck are you?”

Lucian approached him slowly, like a lion stalking his prey. “You have something that I want.” He ran his long elegant fingers over Jacob’s bare chest. “Something inside of you is telling you that she’s yours, but she’s not. She never will be.” He tapped his pectoral muscle. “You should have stayed away.” He grabbed Jacob’s head and pulled him closer. The two of them were so close it looked as if they could kiss.

“It’s her, isn’t it? Tiffany? You’re here because of her.” He swallowed, his Adam’s apple dancing up and down in his throat. “I can see why you love her. I—yeah—I guess there’s no point in lying—I could love her too. I think I already do.”

Lucian’s lips pulled back from his teeth. “Some think she was meant for you. It’s why I let it go before, I wanted to know—I had to see. But her soul already belongs to me. She wouldn’t choose you in the end. I’m saving you the pain of heartbreak.”

Jacob’s eyes widened and his large hands covered Lucian’s. “You mean she’s my soul mate?”

“No,” Lucian growled. “She’s mine.”

He pressed his lips to Jacob’s and the two men, for all appearances, seemed to be locked in an erotic embrace. Lucian’s wings appeared, stretching out as far as my eyes could see and then curled around Jacob. The air shimmered like heat coming off asphalt on a hot summer day. Jacob groaned, the sound orgasmic in nature… And then they merged. Lucian stepped into Jacob and Jacob slumped to the ground. I could no longer see Lucian. Jacob’s eyes snapped open and I saw the truth in them. There was no more Jacob, only Lucian. A wide smile stretched across his face and he winked in my direction, as if he somehow knew I’d be watching this one day.

“And now I know,” I murmured to myself as I was swept back into the dark abyss of nothingness.

I was beneath Lucian’s strong body again, back in the massive bed I’d been in several times before—in Hell. I didn’t know what to think or feel. I was numb to everything. “He was my soul mate, wasn’t he? He was the one Michael said I was meant for?”

Lucian’s entire continence darkened. “I am your soul mate.”

Ignoring Lucian’s anger, I pushed on. “It’s why I wanted him at all. It’s why he kept popping up around me. He was drawn to me. I could feel it. I was drawn to him a little too. But it was nothing compared to you. You would have killed him no matter what I did. But—you—” I knew what had happened from knowledge I’d garnered from when I’d been an angel. Lucian hadn’t merely killed Jacob, he’d destroyed his soul. Completely obliterated it. Burned it up from the inside out.

“I knew who you were interested in from the beginning. I thought I could handle it because I was sure of how it would play out. I’ve always known who he was.” His hands fisted in my hair but quickly loosened. “None of it matters now.”

I’d been in way over my head with him from the beginning. He was the master manipulator. He would have had to be ten steps ahead of everyone, even Michael, to have done all he’d done. He’d played me and everyone else for fools. Now I was exactly where he wanted me and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. And there I was still wanting more answers to questions I should never have to ask.

“If you’re so confident we belong together then why would you kill him? And not just kill him but destroy his soul completely?” Because of me—because of my involvement with him—Jacob was gone, completely destroyed. I choked back the bitter bile that rose up in my throat. I didn’t have time for the guilt now.

“Enough questions. I’ve explained all I will for now.” Shackles appeared on my wrists and ankles, stretching me and straining my muscles to their limit. “I’m sorry for the pain you will endure, my Karma. But I won’t lose you again. The suffering will be short, the reward unmeasurable. We have now entered into the final steps of my plan.”

“What do you mean?” I squirmed, trying not to panic. “And why do you keep calling me
my Karma
?” It’d always felt like it was more than just because it was my stage name when I danced. I’d wondered before but never quite got around to asking. There had always been more pressing questions to be asked. In that moment, this one seemed the most important of all for some reason.

Lucian bent over me, brushing his warm lips against my forehead. “Because you are my karma, just as I am yours.”

And now I understood that too. We were both exactly what each other deserved. I hated admitting it to myself, but it was the truth. I knew it in my soul. Just like I knew that no matter how much I tried to deny it and fight it, yes, I loved Lucian. I just didn’t want to love him because I was afraid what it would mean for the rest of the world. And I was afraid what it would ultimately mean for me. Maybe I’d picked the name Karma for more than one reason. I just hadn’t realized it at the time. “Lucian, I—”

“Shhh…no more talk.” He abruptly turned from me, his muscles tensing. “I’m sorry for what must happen next. Just remember that I do it all out of love, so we can be together…forever.”

“Lucian, stop, no! I thought you wanted me to choose you—I thought—”

He grabbed me by the chin, his lips curling away from his teeth menacingly. “I’ve waited far too long. I’ve done everything in my power to make you happy. But after you handed yourself over to Jacob last night—”

“He was you—you were him. You said it yourself—” Lucian’s lips crashed down over mine, his tongue plunging into my mouth to steal my words. When he pulled away his eyes blazed with a half-crazed sheen to them. Fear coursed through my system. Had I finally pushed Lucian too far? Could a fallen angel actually lose his mind? Was some of his double talk not a game after all, but the fragmented thoughts of someone lost in their own haze of insanity? “It’s time I take from you what you’re too afraid to freely offer. You’re mine, and I will have you.” He backed away from me slowly. “I will let you out of these chains only when you admit that you belong to me and you promise to never run from me again.” With that he disappeared.