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Authors: Stacey Jay

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BOOK: Juliet Immortal
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But then … there is him. His smile, his voice singing so strong, cutting through the curtains where I hide with my paints, curling into my ear, spinning dreams I want to come true
.

They don’t
.

It’s a joke
.

We’re kissing—slow, perfect kisses that make my heart race—when the text comes, asking if he’s taken the Freak’s virginity yet. He tries to hide the phone, but I see it. I start to cry, even though I’m not sad. I’m angry
, so angry.
He offers me fifty dollars—a piece of the bet—if I let him have what he’s come for. I explode. I try to run from the car, but he grabs my hand, squeezing as he pulls back onto the road, telling me to “chill the hell out,” promising to take me to a better place
.

But there is no better place. I know that by now. There are only mirrors reflecting disappointment, shattering it in a million different directions, filling the world until there is no way out. It will always be this way. Always, even when I finally leave the house on El Camino Road
.

The road, the road is … impossible. I won’t let him drive it a second longer. I won’t let him steer through the hole in the mountain down to the beach, where the cold, dark ocean waits like a nightmare creeping. I won’t let him
.

Not now. Not ever again
.

* * *

My eyes fly open, my body humming with adrenaline, drowning in the fear and anger and hopelessness Ariel felt as the car burst through the guardrail and flew over the edge into the ravine.

They fell so fast—distance consumed by time in one awful gulp. She barely had time to scream before the car made impact and her head smashed against the passenger’s window, hard enough to burst the skin at her temple and knock her unconscious, but not hard enough to kill.

Despite the damage, she will live … eventually. Whether she likes it or not.

“You will. You’ll see,” I say aloud, though I know she can’t hear me.

I’ll do something to improve her life before she returns to it, make it bearable, if not beautiful. The Ambassadors encourage their converts to spread love and light, but even if they didn’t, I couldn’t have resisted Ariel. She’s just so … sad. I want to help her, keep her safe from the darkness, from the Mercenaries who prey on people like her.

Especially
one
Mercenary, the one who does his best to make my borrowed lives as miserable as he made the original.

Somewhere out there, in the cool spring night,
he
is finding a body too, summoned by the same energy that pulled me from the mist. In some long-forgotten cemetery, Romeo is seeking a corpse old enough not to be recognized in this small town, finding a place his soul can hide. The Mercenaries of the Apocalypse live inside the dead, restoring rotted flesh to its former glory so long as they lurk within.

For a moment, I wonder what Romeo will look like this
time, then decide it doesn’t matter. Old or young, fat or thin, black, white, or green—the enemy is always the enemy.

“Unhh, awww.” The groan comes from beside me, from the boy who was driving the car.

I wrinkle my nose, disappointment that he’s alive leaving a bad taste in my mouth. As an Ambassador of Light I’m supposed to be above such feelings. But I am not, never have been—not when I was a living girl, and not as an immortal warrior for love.

Love
. Sometimes the thought of it leaves a bad taste in my mouth too.

Still, it’s for the best. It will be easier to avoid police scrutiny if we both emerge from this car alive. And though I might feel the world would be a safer place without Dylan, Ambassadors aren’t allowed to kill human beings … or anything else. Murder feeds the cause of the Mercenaries. I am forbidden to take a life, even the one I have every justification to end.

“But it is never
right
to do
wrong
,” I whisper, even as I silently wish Dylan a few broken bones or—at the very least—a generous helping of pain. I might be forbidden my revenge, but at least Ariel can have a bit of hers.

“Unh …” Dylan moans again, drawing my attention to his face—his full lips, dark eyelashes, and brown hair that waves softly over his forehead. The hair is matted to his skin on one side and a nasty bruise is forming on his cheekbone, but there’s no denying he’s beautiful. And a very bad man in the making.

There’s something cruel in the set of his features—even when he’s unconscious—but I can’t fault Ariel for not seeing beyond the appealing facade. It doesn’t seem like that long ago
that I was the same way—young and naïve and ready to believe in pretty boys and love that lasts forever.

But I learned my lesson. For me, only vengeance is eternal.

The need to punish
his
betrayal keeps me fighting. I am on the side of good, working to prevent the Mercenaries of the Apocalypse from destroying what beauty and goodness remains in humankind. Of all the duties an Ambassador can have, protecting soul mates and preserving the future of romantic love is one of the most well-respected, and that’s … nice. But ruining
his
existence, knowing he’ll go back to the people who rule him without a soul to show for his work, is better. Much, much better.

It helps banish pain to the edge of my awareness as I set about finding a way out of the car. Unfortunately, it won’t be an easy escape. The front end is smashed, the door on the passenger’s side can’t be opened, and the electric buttons that lower the windows make a sick buzzing sound when I tug them with my fingers.

Buttons. They’re similar to the ones I used in my last body in … 1998? 1999? The years blur together, but still, the buttons and the relatively new look of the car’s interior make me wonder what time I’m in. I close my eyes, pawing through Ariel’s memories.

Less than fifteen years have passed since my last shift. Troubling …

I rarely come back to the earth more than once every
fifty
years. Despite the love songs humankind churns out like butter, true lovers don’t come together every day. As the Mercenaries ply their trade—destroying hope, crushing compassion, inciting war and violence—soul-mated pairs are becoming an endangered species.

Real love has little to do with falling. It’s a climb up the rocky face of a mountain, hard work, and most people are too selfish or scared to bother. Very few reach the critical point in their relationship that summons the attention of the light and the dark, that place where they will make a commitment to love no matter what obstacles—or temptations—appear in their path.

And there are others like Romeo and me, two halves of the same whole drafted to opposing sides. The others have their turns in the rotation, I suppose, though I’ve never met any on earth, or in the places outside of time. I’m not aware of other souls in the mist. There is only the endless gray and wisps of consciousness I can’t quite hold on to.

Romeo, however, is allowed to remain on earth, dwelling in the bodies of the dead. Nurse insists the process is unpleasant, but at least he has
some
version of a life.

I am always alone, pretending to be someone else or lost in a vast emptiness. I miss life. I miss conversation and laughter and shared joy and hurt. I miss dancing and painting. I miss waking up to a day with no evil in it—at least, none that I can see. Most of all, I miss my innocence, my faith that those seeking happiness will find it. I make a decent show of being good, but in reality I’m too bitter to be an admirable Ambassador, too young to feel so hopeless.

I’ve seen centuries pass, but I died when I was fourteen and have spent less than twenty conscious years on earth.
He
, on the other hand, continues to live and learn, to stave off madness with open ears and long looks into human eyes. He has seven hundred years of skill and experience, and it helps him get closer to destroying me every single time.

Maybe this time. There’s something … 
off
about this shift.
It isn’t just that it’s come too soon. It’s … something else … something that makes the white-blond hairs on my left arm stand on end.

“Unhh … damn …” Dylan’s eyes flutter open.

Even in the moonlight shining through the ceiling they look dark, peculiar. There’s something strange about this boy, something warped inside him. I’m not surprised that he played a cruel trick on Ariel, but I’m curious to see what he’ll do next. How will he deal with the fact that she nearly killed them both?

“Ariel?” he asks, his voice slurred. “Are you okay?”

“Ye—yes, I think so.” Maybe he doesn’t remember how the car crashed? If so, I won’t be helping him with his recall. I keep my expression carefully blank. “Are you okay?”

“I think I’m fine. I … think I might be …” His words fade as he leans closer. He’s staring at me. I can feel it, though his chin is tipped down, creating hollows the light through the roof can’t touch.

The roof! I look up, and a sigh of relief escapes my lips. It’s made of glass! Thank goodness. Getting out of this car seems like a better idea with every passing second. If Dylan is this disturbing at eighteen, he’ll be a serial killer by the time he’s twenty.

“We’ll be fine. We just need to get out.” I lift blood-slicked fingers to pry at the latch, ignoring Dylan when he leans even closer.

The sunroof is manually operated. I see that the glass panel can pop out, but the mechanism gives me a bit of trouble. Still, I’ll get it open and there will be plenty of room for us to fit through the hole. Me first, of course.

“I’m sorry, could I—” He exhales, his breath hot on my neck. I fight the urge to shudder. “Could I ask you something?”

He wants to talk. Lovely.

I sigh. “Sure.” I pull on the hinges, then realize I should have been pushing and sigh again.

“Has anyone ever told you your hair looks silver in the moonlight?”

I glance in the rearview mirror. My new hair does look silver, like something from a fairy tale. And the rest of what I can see of myself is equally haunting—shocking, really.

Why does Ariel think herself so repulsive? Huge blue eyes dominate my new face, dwarfing my small nose and thin lips. The scars on my cheek and jaw are visible, but they aren’t as terrible as Ariel thinks. The face looking back at me is attractive, compelling. There’s something about it that makes you want to look twice.

So I do, staring a little too long, giving myself away.

Dylan laughs, his lips suddenly far too close to mine. “But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?”

No. It can’t be. We’ve never—
He’s
never—

“Did you miss me, love?” He kisses me on the cheek, a rough, playful kiss that leaves a bit of wet behind.

Dylan
has
died after all. And Romeo has found a corpse. It’s my last thought before his hands are around my throat.

THREE

I
gasp for air as he shoves me back against the door.

My head hits the window—hard—sending pain jabbing into the backs of my eyes. He’s on top of me in seconds, straddling my waist, pinning me to the seat. My hands fly to my throat, prying at his fingers, but it isn’t easy, not as easy as it should be, as it
would
be, if I’d had time to heal all the life-threatening damage and connect with my new form.

In the first few hours after a shift, before my supernatural strength returns, I’m often weak. But that’s never worried me. Even with his uncanny ability to hunt me down, I’ve never run into Romeo until at least a day after taking up residence in a new body. It takes that long to discover which souls I’ve been
sent to protect, to contact Nurse in a mirror’s smooth reflection and receive my instructions from the Ambassadors.

Then it’s simply a matter of waiting and staying alert. Romeo always makes an appearance. Invariably, he’s summoned to the same place and time as I, to try to win the same souls over to his dark cause. He’ll do his best to persuade one soul mate to sacrifice his or her true love to the powers of hate, destruction, and chaos and become an immortal Mercenary—just as
he
did the night after we consummated our wedding vows.

I still wonder what they offered him. What treat they dangled, and how long it took for him to realize their promises were lies, that he’d shoved a knife through my heart for nothing. I know he hasn’t received what he was promised. I’ve seen the flicker of regret in his eyes.

Our new eyes meet, and for a moment, I think I see it again, just before he brings his nose to my lips and inhales. “Your breath always smells the same. So sweet.”

“Get off me,” I warn, willing down a wave of nausea. It’s impossible to believe I once dreamt of spending my life
worshipping
this monster.

Now I dream about killing him so I never have to feel anything ever again.

“I don’t think so. I’d rather stay as I am. This new body is … delicious.” He laughs as he fights to keep his fingers around my throat, to keep choking the life out of Ariel. If he kills her, he’ll kill us both, and he knows it. But he doesn’t care about collateral damage. To him a two-for-one murder will be a special treat. “Seems a shame to finish you so quickly.”

“You’re not going to finish me.”

He won’t. It can’t end here. I want to see him fail another
time, another hundred times. Adrenaline dumps into my bloodstream, making my heart race, giving me the strength I need to pry his fingers apart and smash the heel of my hand into his face.

“Mmph.” He groans as I follow the first blow with a punch in the stomach, but I can tell he isn’t hurt. At least, not badly enough. We’re too close for me to put any power behind my movement, even if I were in top form.

I have to get out.

Shoving him to one side, I lunge for the handle of the roof, but he grabs my arm and twists it behind my back. “Bastard!” I scream, surprised at how much it hurts.

“Calling names. Shame. Aren’t we beyond that, sweetness?” With a grunt, he shoves me into the backseat, his knee sharp against my spine. I land on my stomach with my arm still wrenched behind me. Romeo gives my arm another jerk, making me howl.

No. Not like this, not tonight
. On impulse, I reach around with my free hand and grab the most sensitive bits of any man—past or present—and twist them. Hard.

BOOK: Juliet Immortal
11.18Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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