Everlost (The Night Watchmen Series Book 3) (36 page)

“You see, dear Faye, you were never going to win. Not when I have this in my arsenal,” Bael says, extending his hand out to showcase my parents.

“Faye!” my mother’s screaming out as fire climbs up her body until I can’t see her face anymore. Until she collapses into a pile beside my dad.

Ice has frozen my veins. Frozen my thoughts. I feel like I’m strapped down to a merry-go-round, spinning faster and faster, until my stomach flattens against my back and the world is spinning in front of my eyes.

Bael snaps his fingers and their bodies lift. They’re back on their feet, screaming and crying in pain, as Bael opens and closes his fists.

“Stop it!” I scream out, trying to worm my way out of Weldon’s grip, but he’s giving me all he’s got, not willing to let go.

“I control their pain,” Bael says, his eyes gleaming with pleasure as he squeezes his fists harder, pulling more screams from them.

“Please!” I cry out, reaching out to them.

“They aren’t real!” Weldon says as I push at his arm. His words are flies buzzing around my ears. I swat at them. Shove them away from me.

“Let me
GO
!” I shout. I have to get to them. Have to help them. “Mom!” I wriggle out of his grip, but he’s already grabbing my other arm, spinning me around to face him.

“Listen to me, damn it!” Weldon shouts in my face, shaking me. My breath hitches in my throat. My knees riot against the fact that I’m still standing.

“I do love a family reunion,” Bael says from behind them. He glances down at his wrist, at a watch that isn’t there, and says, “But time is of the essence, and we’re running short.” He lifts his hands before I can even grasp what’s happening, and then they disappear, leaving me staring at nothing but an inky void I want to crawl through. “We’ve had about enough of that, don’t you think? Enough to dip your toes in my offer?”

Murder lives in my gaze.

He slithers forward, stopping a few feet in front of me, his lips curled with disdain. “You see,” he says, looking triumphantly at me. He has me where he wants me, and he knows it. That has always been his intention. To melt me into something pliable. Mold me into a new kind of warrior. A loyal one, bent into doing whatever he wishes, and it makes every part of me writhe against his invisible shackles.

“They’re in Hell, Faye Middleton. A place I control. And they’re burning over and over again, in an endless cycle. Dying as many times as it pleases me for them to, only to be immediately reborn back into a world of unimaginable pain.” He lowers his bushy brows on me, cruelty gleaming in his eyes, and adds, “And they’ll continue to die until I get what I want from you. Do you understand now? Is that a clear enough explanation for you?”

Horror is a fist clenched tight around my throat, and it squeezes me so hard that I’d drop to my knees if it weren’t for Weldon having a tight hold on me.

“What are you offering?” I force out.

“No, Faye!” Weldon shouts from beside me.

Bael’s cruel smile gleams under the moonlight. “Isn’t it funny how the past repeats itself? Like maybe fate or destiny, or whatever you want to call it, is really just some cat-and-mouse game that has no end.” He chuckles to himself as a smirk appears. A smirk that unravels my chords. A smirk I want to slap clean off his face. “It just occurred to me that if this were indeed a cat-and-mouse game, you would play the mouse,” he says knowingly as his eyes shift to Weldon, robbing me of breath. Stealing private moments from me once again.

“Why, you moth—”

Bael’s hand flies up and, just like that, Weldon’s words disappear as if they never were. “I know,” he says, on the edges of light laughter. “Fitting, isn’t it? It’s almost too perfect. And I,” he says, pointing to his chest, “would play the cat of course. I do play a mean cat.” He scratches at the air, and it takes me right back to the night he scratched me when trying to tell me about the Dagger of Retribution hidden in my mother’s Grimoire.

This shit storm has no end in sight.

He claps his hands, rubbing them together. Does a small, arrogant dance of giddiness. “Boy, how I do love it when fate comes together like that. Now, if you promise to be a good little mouse, then we can get down to business.”

A rope materializes in front of me.

“Wrap that around you.”

“You think a rope is going to keep her bound?” Weldon says snidely.

Bael flicks his gaze over in Weldon’s direction. He doesn’t say anything for a second. “Enough with the chatter,” he says, glaring at me. “I came here today to make you an offer.”

“She doesn’t want your offer,” Weldon says boldly.

I think he’s lost his mind.

But Bael doesn’t move. Doesn’t strike out, and it makes me wonder why. Before, he would have turned the woods inside out to find me. To kill me. My scar is proof of that. So why not now that I’m standing right in front of him?

“I wasn’t speaking to you, mongrel,” Bael says. “I was talking to her. Do you want to hear it or not?”

I hear my mother screaming. My father crying. And I’m not sure if it’s his doing or not. By the smile on his face, I think it is. Tears well up behind my eyes, but I refuse to let them fall. I use my anger as fuel. As a shield.

“No?” he says, still smiling. Always smiling. His head dips to the side, and then he takes a step back. “And here I thought you’d do anything for them. I guess I underestimated you then. I guess you really are more like Clara than I thought. Heartless. Ruthless. Willing to trample on whomever you need to in order to meet your own needs.”

“I’m nothing like her,” I say, disgust spewing from my words.

“No?” he says, his lips pursed in thought. “If you say so.” He tucks his arms behind his back. “I was only going to offer that your parents return to this plane, in exchange for you handing yourself over. I think it’s a fair enough bargain.”

I think the earth has disappeared from beneath me, because I feel like I can’t really be here. He can’t really have offered me this.

“How can I trust you?” I say, barely able to hear my own voice.

“Faye, no!” Weldon hisses through his teeth.

Bael smiles. “If there’s one thing you can count on in a demon, it’s that a deal is a deal. I don’t play games. My word is my bond.”

“And all I have to do is go with you? Then what?”

“Do I really need to answer that?” he says.

The Unholy Seal. Mourdyn. An endless hell.

But it’d be worth it, if I could save those that I love. If only I’d be the one down there, putting an end to this.

“Don’t you even think about it,” Weldon says in a sharp tone.

“What if I can save Claire? I can do this, and keep others from dying, Weldon.”

“Absolutely not. Not like this,” he says, squeezing my hand hard.

“Your answer, Everlasting,” Bael says, impatience buried beneath his charismatic tone. “The Unholy Seal is at its prime. The full moon is upon us. Time is of the essence. One of these expressions should suffice.”

Grey, shadowy figures begin to take shape behind him, moving in from behind the trees. Masks, just like I remember, with long, metal beaks like some kind of warped, evil crow, cover the faces of the many Darkyns behind him. My stomach sinks to the floor. My heart jackhammers against my chest. There are still so many of them, even after I killed so many. More than my eyes can comprehend. They stretch out like a dark blanket of shadows.

“You see, this is only going to end one way—my way,” Bael says through a throat full of laughter. “Whether you know it already or not, you’re mine.” His eyes go dark as his body morphs into the demonic shape it took the night he tried to capture me at Whiskey Hallow. Large, clawed wings sprout from behind his back. “You will come with me whether you like it or not.”

The hair on my arms begins to rise. Magic lifts all around us like summer heat after a rainstorm. I can feel the spells weaving. Hear the spells being whispered. Black, inky vines stretch toward our feet like hungry fingers. Trees move in behind us, forming a barricade I’m not sure we’ll be able to slip past.

Weldon looks over at me, eyes raised, and I’m sure my heart is going to gallop out of my chest at any moment. “Time to go,” he says, and then he takes a hold of my hand, sprinting us away from Bael and the Darkyns.

But cackles of laughter and sharp cracks of magic strike the air, preventing us from passing the barricade of trees. No matter which way we turn, we’re stuck. Lost. Trapped.

Realization nips at our heels. We’re not going anywhere.

I’M SLAMMED UP AGAINST A tree as ropes manifested by the Darkyns wrap around my torso like a boa constrictor.

Pain unlike anything I’ve ever felt explodes within my limbs as the rope compresses against my skin. It’s like my blood is boiling, my bones are crushing, and my skin is on fire, all at once. I struggle against the rope, calling on every spell I can think of to unwind them, but they have a binding spell on them, keeping me from using my magic.

Weldon growls out from the iron chains wrapped around him, digging into his flesh, pressing him further against the tree. Smoke billows off his body in sickening waves. He tries to strong-arm the chains, but his face darkens from the need to shift to his demon side.

Cruel, mirthless laughter bubbles up from the depths of Bael’s black soul as he makes his way over to us. He takes his time, his steps calculated and precise. After he stops in front of me, he reaches out toward my face. I try to turn away, but his hand aggressively cups my chin, fingers boring into my cheeks as he forces me to look at him.

“Do not turn away from me. Ever,” he says through bared teeth.

Fire burns within my eyes, quaking all the way through my bones.

“I’m going to take pleasure in killing everyone you love… while you watch,” he says, his black eyes swimming with cruelty. He calls one of the Darkyns over to him, leans away from me to whisper a command in his ear, and then turns back to me. His gaze moves lithely over to Weldon. “You.”

Weldon has long since stopped struggling. If his gaze could strip the flesh from every enemy around us, then we’d be scot-free.

“You’re a disgrace to the demon name.”

Weldon leans as far forward as he can, smoke rising once again from his searing flesh. “Then I’ve done my job well,” he spits out through clenched teeth.

Bael rolls his eyes to the side, his lips pressed in a thin line of indifference. “You know what I think?” he says, pointing his finger in Weldon’s face in a scholarly manner. “I think a few years back in your holding cell would do you some good. Remind you of who you really are.” He leans forward, dropping his tone, and adds, “Because you and I both know that this is a front.”

With that, he touches Weldon’s left thigh with his index finger, and it’s then that I see what I’ve never tried to see before—his stigma.

Weldon cries out as he’s forced to fully turn into the side of himself that he hates the most, and I want to purge every awful feeling that’s ripping through my heart. I struggle against the ropes binding me as the laughter kicks up like thunder from the masked Darkyns standing all around us, watching. Waiting. Weldon’s body grows taller, muscles filled out, his face darkening past the point of recognition.

“You see, no matter how hard you try to deny yourself, you are what you are,” Bael says, standing back with a proud, pleased smile plastered on his face. “I am your father. Your maker. And no matter how long you spend with these… fleshly beings… you’re still bound to my word.”

Weldon growls out, the deep, throaty sound reaching out beyond the trees. It’s a sound that I imagine could split the earth clean in half. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever heard from him before and, for a moment, fear settles in the pit of my stomach like an unwelcome worm, slithering around. His eyes are no longer golden. His hair no longer in its usual coordinated mess.

He’s… he’s a full-on demon.

My fists form into steel clubs I want to crush Bael with. “Leave him alone!” I shout as I try to absorb energy around me. It’s coming in small, short waves, but not providing me with enough to dissolve the spells holding me captive.

Bael stiffens. Turns on me. A ripple of anger plays over his face and, in his soulless gaze, I know that my straw has been pulled.

“It’s time,” he says, the amusement drained from his voice. Two words never sounded so sinister, so packed full with all the hate this world has to offer. “This is going to happen, Everlasting. You’re going to break the Unholy Seal, and then, together, we’re going to awaken the greatest evil this planet has ever known.” He looks back over his shoulder at Weldon and, with a swish of his hand, the iron chains fall. “Weldon, come.”

Weldon, like a well-trained pet, steps away from the tree, his burly arms curved like bows at his sides.

I swallow shards of ice that burn like fire.

He flexes his hands, and each knuckle cracks. Cranes his neck to each side, stretching out the thick tendons.

“Weldon?” I whisper, searching his pitiless eyes for any sign of the person I know, but all I find is an empty, bottomless pit. A pit he’s been dangling off the edge of all this time, only to have finally been pushed by the one person I prayed I’d never encounter again.

I look up to the sky, up to the moon, praying… begging for the Goddess to help me. To send me some sign that will allow me to get us out of this.
Please,
I pray,
just let us get out of this and I swear we’ll finish this.

“Grab her and bring her to the Underground,” Bael commands as he turns away from me. He strolls over to the never-ending crowd of Darkyns. “It’s time. Kill the rest at the manor, and then begin your attacks on every Academy known. Leave no one alive.” He swirls his hand once through the air, and a small, black hole tears through the air.

“Wait! My parents!” I shout. “A deal is a deal.”

“And you didn’t shake on it, now did you? Ready?” he asks me, wearing a devious smile.

“Jaxen?”

“Faye! Where are you? We’re in the forest, but we keep circling back to the opening. We can’t get past whatever spell they’ve woven.”

I try not to break at the sound of his voice. No matter how many times I swallow to help me push the words out, the lump won’t budge. So I open all the way up to him, to let him see what I see.

I turn back to Weldon, who’s stomping his way over to me. “Weldon, you don’t have to do this,” I plead, trying to break through the spell binding my magic. But the seven Darkyn leaders are still chanting, still using every ounce of their magic to cage me in.

Reality punches me in the gut.

Jaxen starts listing off everything he can think of that I should do, but in his voice, I hear the doubt. I hear the truth he’s trying to avoid.

This is where our roads separate. This is where my brave mistake stabs me in the back.

Weldon stops in front of me, moving mechanically. I’m searching his eyes, telling him to snap out of it, but when I’m loosened from the tree and hauled over his shoulder, I know that there’s no getting through to him. I’ve screwed up. Royally. And now I don’t have the slightest clue as to how I’m going to get myself out of this.

“Jaxen, listen to me,”
I say as Weldon’s steps jar his shoulder into my stomach.
“He’s taking me to the Unholy Seal. He’s sending Darkyns as we speak to come and kill you all. You have to get them out. Warn the Watchmen out there that they’re going to attack all the academies.”

Curses assault my brain as Jaxen yells out, so loud, that I hear him through the treetops. So loud it vibrates through my core.
“I told you not to go!”

“I had to!”
I shout back. I think about telling him about my parents, about the deal, and then quickly push the thought away.

“I’m not giving up,”
he says, the pain in his voice ripping my heart into shreds.
“Not until I know you’re safe.”

Every step Weldon takes sends my stomach further up my chest until I’m sure I’m going to throw up. I want to warn Jaxen, to tell him to stay away, but I know the point is moot. He’s going to try no matter what. I just hope wherever they’re taking me is somewhere he won’t ever have to wind up.

“Faye?”
he asks, and the fear in his voice slaps me hard across the cheek.

“I’d tell you not to look for me, but I know it’s pointless.”
Tears slip quietly down my cheeks that have gone cold.

“Because you’re my soul, Faye.”

I close my eyes.
“And you’re mine.”
A small pause.
“If I… if I don’t see you again—”

“Don’t say that,”
he says harshly.
“We’re going to warn the others, and then we’ll be heading for the Unholy Seal. I will fi—”

And before he can finish, we enter through the shadow.