Her Soul to Take (Souls Trilogy) Page 20

  He said it so calmly, but there was something like anger in his tone. It didn’t take much to imagine how truly horrifying it would be to be hunted by Leon, truly hunted.

  I never would have escaped.

  “Why didn’t you do it?”

  “Kent had lost the grimoire. I didn’t have to do shit he said anymore.”

  “But if he’d had it...would you have come after me?”

  He stiffened a little, and was silent. Then, finally, he said roughly, “Kent tried and failed to sacrifice a girl before. Juniper Kynes. He got Jeremiah and Victoria to lure her into the woods. Drug her. When she ran, he sent me after her.” His teeth clipped together, again and again: a slow, irritated click. “I lost her in the woods. There were consequences for failing to fulfill Kent’s orders, so I did everything I could to hunt her down. But she escaped me.”

  I couldn’t imagine being able to escape him. It seemed impossible. “She got away? Did she live?”

  “That’s what I’ve heard,” he said. “I’m shocked she managed to fight off the Eld all these years. Kent considered her a loss, and they went after her brother instead. That one was successful. Marcus is sleeping with the God now.”

  I shoved out from under his arm, staring at him in horror. “Marcus? The boy that got stabbed on campus?”

  He nodded. “The first sacrifice. Two more to come.”

  “Did you kill him?” I whispered, the knot in my stomach pulling tighter and tighter.

  “No.” His voice was firm, his eyes bright in the dark as he shoved his hands in his pockets. “Kent would never allow a demon to perform a sacrifice. One of his own little cult, his Libiri, need to wield the knife. Prove themselves to their God. It would be a waste of the God’s favor if I did the killing.”

  My breath came out shaky but relieved. He’d already admitted to killing people — numerous people, probably dozens — but somehow it still mattered whether or not he’d killed an innocent like Marcus.

  He was staring at me. Watching me. Consuming me with the fire in his eyes. “Does that make me less monstrous?” he said, his voice quiet in the dark. “Does it somehow make me redeemable, that I didn’t wield the knife? That I only dug up his corpse? That I only did the grunt work?” He didn’t really expect me to answer; he just kept going. “Do the atrocities I’ve committed get a pass in your mind because I had to choose between obedience and torture? Would you have forgiven me for taking you, if you knew it was to avoid pain?”

  I gulped. His voice was tight, as if he was still in pain, as if whatever tortures Kent had inflicted to force his obedience were still lingering. “You wouldn’t have taken me.”

  He scoffed. “What the hell makes you so certain of that?”

  “You wouldn’t have,” I whispered. I didn’t know why I was so certain. Perhaps it was just that flawed survival instinct again, imagining I was somehow too special to die.

  Or perhaps it was because I could so vividly remember him picking me up in his truck as I was walking home in the dark. Perhaps it was because I could still hear the fury in his voice when he’d said, “I don’t know why the hell you think it’s a good idea to go walking around in the dark, but you need to cut that shit out.”

  “Why did you protect me, Leon?”

  He looked appalled at my question. He shook his head, but I insisted. “Why are you protecting me? Why? What makes me any different than the last girl?”

  He was really scowling now; his hands were working inside his jacket, as if he was clenching and unclenching his fists. His jaw, too, was tensing. But I let the question hang. I wanted an answer. There was a hell of a lot going on that I didn’t understand, but him? Us? Whatever the hell that meant? I wanted to know.

  “I decided I wanted you,” he said simply, but the words barely made their way out from between his teeth. “I saw you, and...and I felt…” He winced, as if the word stung. Felt. What did a demon feel? “Not anger. Not hatred or fury. You…” He turned his face away, staring back into the trees. “You’re a light in the dark, and I’ve been in the dark a very long time.”

  His words were like fists beating against my heart. It hurt, somehow, to hear something so genuine from him. And it terrified me, to feel it tug at me, to feel those beating fists press into my heart and pull.

  He looked at me again, and I forgot how to breathe. “I want you. Irrevocably. But I can’t settle for less than all of you. Body and soul, Raelynn. We demons, when we see something we like, we need to possess it. It’s in our nature.”

  He took a step toward me, and I took a step back. He smirked at that, his sharp teeth so white in the dark. “Does it frighten you, to be so desired? To know I want you regardless of time or distance? To know I want you as mine, wholly possessed without question?”

  How could I be frightened of the very thing I’d wanted? I couldn’t imagine being desired so determinedly that eternity wasn’t a question, but a demand. It was not only a promise of protection, of safety. It was a promise of ownership. Desire. Bondage. A reassurance of forever.

  “I can’t settle for less.” He circled me, slowly, shoes crunching on the twigs and leaves, his voice deepening to a growl as he said, “It’s enough to drive me to madness, Rae, wanting you so fucking badly. But I’ve lingered on Earth for too long now.” He laughed humorlessly, and I felt the familiar caress of him getting inside my head, the subtle influence that made my spine tingle like fingers brushing over my skin. “I want to have you, but I can’t unless you agree. That’s the curse of it all. I can’t —” He cut himself off, wrestled with the words, then, “I can’t linger here and watch you die.”

  I blinked rapidly, as if he’d slapped me. “I’m...I’m not going to die.”

  “Oh, but you will. You will, as all humans do. That light will go out and death will take you from me.” It was so dark, I couldn’t see his face now. Only his eyes, preternaturally bright. “But with your soul, death can’t touch you. The God can’t touch you. Nothing, nothing will take you from me.”

  My chest felt tight. The weight of his words was suffocating, and perhaps it was the lack of oxygen that made my face feel so hot.

  “You used to come out here and feed your fairies,” he said. “You believed in something you couldn’t see, something you couldn’t grasp. I did too, once. Boulevard du Temple, Paris. 1755. There was a young man with a violin and fire in his heart. I believed, with such certainty, he would be mine. And I was young. So much imagination.” He shook his head. “Humans grow old so quickly. Your lives are the blink of an eye when you see all eternity stretched out before you. Yet I kept bringing honey to something I couldn’t hold, I couldn’t possess. He died.” He nodded, as if to remind himself that it was true. “His fire was gone. So easily. And then my name was called by strangers, to Cairo. By the time I’d freed myself, and went back to France…” He fluttered his hand. “I never found his grave. I searched. I haunted the cemeteries so long they began to tell stories of me. Zane found me there.” He shook his head. “He dragged me back to Hell. Told me I was mad. Mad for a human whose soul I could never possess.”

  “Leon…” I didn’t know what to say. It had been centuries, but his voice was still rough with pain. So many years, and a single human death haunted him.

  Ironic that a killer would be tortured by a death.

  “I’ve spent enough time haunting graveyards,” he said. “If you gave me your soul, neither gods nor men could take you from me. And that frightens you.”

  “Of course it does.” I was surprised to hear my voice break. It was frightening because it didn’t feel real. It felt impossible.

  Breakups were easy, too easy. Because they needed space, because it just wasn’t working, because I was moving, because I was too much. But commitment? To belong? To be really and truly wanted? That was hard.

  Humans weren’t good at forever. We weren’t built for forever.

  “Raelynn. Come here.”

  I went to him without hesitation, and I stood in front of h
im feeling so small, somewhere between frightened and hopeful, as if there was anything he could possibly say that would make all this make sense.

  His fingers brushed over my face, and I leaned into his palm. For a moment, the whole world was the touch of his hand. The warmth in him. The citrus-smoke smell of him. For a moment, I thought of eternity.

  “I’m leaving.”

  I opened my eyes. “What?”

  “I need to find the grimoire. Then my time on Earth is done. I’ve been here long enough.”

  It felt like cold water dripping down my ribs. I didn’t want to hear him say that, but I couldn’t prevent it. I couldn’t say the words that would make him stay. I couldn’t say anything at all. I could only let the decisions I couldn’t bear to make form a stranglehold around my lungs and squeeze until it hurt.

  Maybe he thought I would say something. The silence stretched out between us, and he pulled his hand away from my face. It was cold. So cold. He leaned his face down, the gap between our mouths so small, but somehow it was a chasm.

  “Go inside,” he said softly. Such a simple dismissal. He’d taken all that passion, all that desperation, folded it up and tucked it away as neatly as if it was never there. My stomach twisted, tighter and tighter. My lungs squeezed, smaller and smaller.

  “I don’t want you to go,” I said. He frowned.

  “Then make me stay. Properly. Not with petty magic tricks.”

  Give up your soul.

  Terrifying, alluring. Everything I wanted and was terrified of having. A weight so heavy it crushed the words inside me.

  Leon smirked.

  “Go inside, doll. For tonight, I’ll watch. In the morning, I’ll go.”

  “That’s not fair.” My voice sounded petulant. Desperate.

  He shook his head. “No. It’s not. I’ve yet to find fairness anywhere on Earth.”

  I had to walk away. Had to. So I turned and trudged back through the trees, refusing to look back. Why look to see if he was following or if he’d vanished already? Why pretend he was some mortal man whom I could convince to stay for just a little longer, until things got too serious and everything was too stifling and I wasn’t worth the effort?

  Why pretend he hadn’t offered exactly what I wanted, and I’d refused it?

  The days rapidly grew colder as Halloween approached. One day it started raining, and simply didn’t stop. The downpour went on for hours, and even when it lessened, heavy droplets still tapped against the windows and created a tiny river system across campus. Inaya and I would eat lunch together indoors, huddled close on the wooden benches in the big dining hall, laughing and sipping hot coffee to warm our hands.

  Victoria and Jeremiah frequently joined us.

  I’d been able to make friends in my classes, and Inaya had introduced me to more of her own group, so I tried to make a point of inviting other people, but the Hadleighs turned up even when I least wanted them there. It was almost like they knew I was trying to get some distance from them, so they were drawing closer than ever.

  Their presence made me anxious, Leon’s warnings about them echoing in my head. Sometimes, knowing they’d be there in the dining hall was just too much, so I’d find a place to eat outside so I could avoid them. I wanted to warn Inaya about them, but I didn’t know what I could tell her. The things I was worried about would sound ridiculous to anyone who hadn’t seen the things I’d seen.

  It would sound ridiculous to anyone who hadn’t learned to trust the words of a demon.

  There was a courtyard behind the library where I’d sometimes eat, seated at a bench tucked into a little alcove against the building. It was cold, and my fingers felt numb as I ate my sandwich, but I was determined to tough it out. Victoria had been texting me all day. The number of events she’d invited me to over the past week was absurd. Every time I turned one down, she’d come up with another one.

  It would have seemed so innocently friendly, but I believed Leon’s warning. I wasn’t safe with the Hadleighs.

  “There you are.”

  I nearly dropped my sandwich. Jeremiah stood there, his hood pulled up, smiling. The rain was dripping from his coat, and I scooted over quickly as he took a seat on the bench beside me. I knew his last class was all the way on the other side of campus. There was no reason for him to be back here – unless he’d been looking for me.

  “Aren’t you cold?” He looked at my shivering hands, and before I could say a word, he enfolded my hands in his. I tensed up, instinctually wanting to pull away. His fingertips were cold, and he blew on my hands to warm them.

  I tried not to shudder. “It gets too stuffy inside,” I said. “Sometimes it’s nice to just be alone, with my thoughts.”

  He paused, his eyes locked onto mine. “Alone with your thoughts…yeah. I get that.” He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Victoria was worried you didn’t text her back. So I figured I’d look for you.”

  I’d felt my phone buzz. I hadn’t even bothered to look. “Oh. Well. Here I am. Totally fine. My phone died earlier, so…” I shrugged. Please go away. Go away, go away.

  He chuckled, shaking his head. He still hadn’t let go of my hands. “I have an extra charger. You can borrow it when we go back inside.”

  “Well, I have to get to my next class in just a few minutes, so –“

  “Do you? Your next class? Already?” He glanced at his watch. “You still have thirty minutes, don’t you?”

  I pulled my hands back. There was no one else back here. No one came to this courtyard, especially not in the pouring rain. “I’m trying to get there earlier to talk to the professor.”

  He nodded slowly. “Right, right. Okay. You’re funny, Rae.” I didn’t think this was funny. Frankly, he didn’t sound very amused either. “Have you been talking to Everly?”

  “Everly? No, I…I thought she was missing. I haven’t seen her.”

  He smiled widely. “Oh, she’s not missing. There’s no need to use a word like that. Might get people alarmed. She just left home. She’d get these crazy ideas in her head, and end up scaring herself.”

  I began to collect my things. “I really do need to go –” He grabbed my arm, hard. I stared at his hand, then back up at his face, and said, “If you don’t fucking let go, I’m going to start screaming.”

  He waited a beat before he released me. “Sorry. Sorry, Rae. It’s just…I was worried that maybe Everly had started a rumor, and you’d heard it.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “What kind of rumor?”

  “She’d come up with really sick stuff, Rae,” he said, leaning close. His breathe smelled weird, like fish. “She had this wild idea that me and Victoria were trying to kill her.” He laughed. “Crazy, see? Who would come up with an idea like that about their own family?”

  I nodded. Anything to get him to let me leave. “Yeah, crazy.”

  “I just wanted to make sure you didn’t believe something like that,” he said softly. “We’re not like that. We just want you to feel welcome.” His hand, leaning against the bench, had moved closer. His knuckles were touching my thigh. “I just want you to feel at home.”

  I got up abruptly, hugging my bag to my chest, my sandwich still sitting on the bench. “Well, I haven’t talked to her, and I’ll let you know if I see her.”

  He leaned back on the bench. He wasn’t smiling. He was just staring at me, his eyes moving over me slowly. “Alright. I’ll see you at the Halloween party, right?”

  I did my best to smile. “Yeah, of course. Wouldn’t miss it.”

  “Good girl.” I shuddered from head to toe. That wasn’t something I ever wanted to hear out of his mouth. “I’ll be seeing you then. Wouldn’t want you to be late to that little meeting with your professor.”

  The cabin was so quiet, especially with the rain pouring for days on end. Quiet and lonely. I enjoyed some alone time, and Cheesecake was an affectionate companion, but there was a void he couldn’t fill. I tried to stay occupied with homework. I tried to ignore my growing a
nxiety about the Halloween party.

  I tried not to think of Leon. I tried not to remember how good his arms felt around me.

  But when I wasn’t having nightmares of my name being called from long, dark tunnels, I was dreaming of him. Dreaming of his voice, of his lips on mine, of his strong hands holding me. I dreamed of his words, again and again.

  Make me stay. It’s enough to drive me to madness, Rae, wanting you so fucking badly.

  It may have just been a result of the rain, but the woods around my house were getting quieter. No crickets. No birdsong. No deer in the yard in the early mornings. Just the endless patter of rain, and the trees groaning in the wind.

  I was probably just being paranoid, but when I’d go out to my car to leave for class, my neck would prickle as if eyes were on me. But no matter how many times I scanned the trees, there was nothing there.

  Nothing I could see.

  The severed heads Leon had brought were beginning to fall apart, crumbling and rotting as they fell from their stakes and became one with the soil. With them gone, how long would I be safe? How long would the Eld stay away? I bought more cinnamon and rosemary, and found a shop in town that sold bundles of sage. I called my grandma, and of course she was ecstatic to have me over for Fall break. But that was nearly a month away.

  I spent hours after sundown staring out the window into the yard, watching. Waiting, my camera in my hands. I’d play back the footage of Leon sleeping, comforted by the sight of his face. I’d recorded it in hopes of sending it to somebody who could help me, but now I felt strangely protective of it. The closest I got to reaching out to anyone was an email to a local pastor, but all I managed was to write Dear Father Patterson in the body of an email before I deleted it. A priest couldn’t fight monsters.

  I wasn’t getting nearly enough sleep. My nightmares were getting worse. The rain just kept pouring, but I was still waiting on the storm.

  Something was coming. Something was watching.

  The weekend before Halloween, I jumped at the chance to spend a Saturday at Inaya’s apartment, just the two of us. I tucked a bottle of wine in my bag, bundled up in my coziest sweats and hoodie, and was hurriedly trying to lock my door as the rain poured around me when something on the porch railing caught my eye.