Torn (Demon Kissed #3) (9 page)

Please
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CHAPTER NINE

He sighed and through the bond I felt that this was against his better judgment. He thought I was safer down here. He took my hand, “I’ll take you to her, but we can’t use the portal you’re headed towards. We have to use a different one. Shannon will gut you the second you walk through the tomb.” I shivered, and was about to tell him that I didn’t think she could have gotten back so quickly, but Collin cut me off. “Sorry, but you have to realize what you’re dealing with. Shannon is going to be everything she was—times a hundred. If she was good at something before, now she is going to be unbelievably fantastic. And if her job is to kill you, then you have to avoid her. Take no chances. There are no more near-misses, not with her. If you see her again, you have to realize that one of you is not walking away alive. If you see her again, kill her before she kills you.”

I nodded. This is what my life had come to. It made me feel sick inside that Shannon had turned on me. I didn’t want to think about it. If I could live the rest of my life without seeing her again, that would be okay. But the odds of that happened weren’t good. Even with the poison in my chest.

Collin pulled me to my feet, explaining,
“
Valefar leave the Underworld through various portals. Once you know where they are, you can effonate there, and then pass through them. The living and the dead aren’t supposed to mingle, and that includes us. I
mean,
me…and the Valefar. The angels went to great lengths to keep us separated from your world. But there are a few doors they didn’t seal, because they didn’t know of them.” He winked at me. I wondered if he would have told me the portals locations if he knew there was an angel hiding out in Hell.
An angel who would seal the portals.
All of them.

I asked, “So, Valefar get around down here by effonating and then passing through a portal? We can’t just effonate directly in or out of Hell?” He nodded. “But once we go through the portal, Valefar can effonate through the Underworld, just like they do above? They can go anywhere?” He nodded again. That must be why I never saw Valefar walking around down here. They didn’t have to. And it avoided unnecessary unpleasantness with demon birds, dragons, and psychotic Valefar if they effonated. “Then why don’t we just effonate to a portal?”

He replied, “We can’t. The only portal you’ve ever seen is the one you came through to get down here. It’s not safe to use that one again, and you can get to the other locations because you’ve never seen them,” he paused gazing at me. “Besides, I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

I smiled at him. I wasn’t sure what’d he do. I asked, “So, you’ll come with me?”

His eyebrows pinched together and he gave me a look that made me know that he thought my question was strange. “Yes. Why wouldn’t I?”

I shrugged. “Just wasn’t sure because of the way things happened before.” I wasn’t sure if Collin knew that Kreturus had been in him or not. He never acknowledged that he was possessed, and during the time we were apart, well—it was possible that Kreturus left him. Or Kreturus could still be in there, but I couldn’t sense the old demon. Even during that kiss, there was no trace of the ancient evil. It was just Collin and his icy hot kisses that I felt.

He turned me towards him, “Ivy, I’ll do everything I can to protect you, but I have to tell you something. Kreturus and I have a past. He’s targeting me, and not just because of you. When we were in New York, I told you that I made a bargain with him—my soul for yours.” Collin held my shoulders, but couldn’t meet my eyes, “That was the deal. I told you that I’d do anything to escape my life as a Valefar. I wanted my soul back. Kreturus promised me I would have it. Since demons have a tendency to lie and not follow through on their promises, I demanded part of my soul before I began looking for you. Kreturus gave it to me.”

I couldn’t believe what Collin was telling me. Kreturus had given him part of his soul? That meant Valefar could be restored! That meant that I could save Apryl and undo the horrors I inflicted on Eric! Hope soared within me and deafened me to the solemn look on Collin’s face. If I’d noticed his expression, I wouldn’t have jacked myself up so high on hope, because as soon as he finished his story, I felt miserable.

“Ivy, he gave me a piece of my soul. He said it was a down payment—a glimpse of what I would get when I completed my task. Kreturus went the Pool of Lost Souls and called my soul out. He took a portion of it and infused it into my Valefar body. My soul and my body were reunited. But, it didn’t work.” Collin released my shoulders and tipped his head toward the ground. The toe of his shoe scraped against the loose dirt. “As soon as my soul was reunited with my body, it became rancid—like it didn’t belong inside of me. When the Valefar killed me, I was a good man with a good soul. When Kreturus gave me back my soul, I was an evil man with an evil body. The good soul and the bad body couldn’t fuse again, not without force. So that’s what Kreturus did. He forced the soul to reattach to me, and in doing so, corrupted it. My soul had to become like me to live within me.”

Collin laughed coldly, folding his arms tightly to his chest. “I thought I outsmarted Kreturus. I thought that piece of soul would free me from him, but it turns out he outsmarted me. Because it doesn’t matter how pure my soul was before, there is no way it will merge with my body ever again - not after living the life of a Valefar. But when he forced it, he forced the evil from hundreds of lifetimes onto that tiny piece of soul. And no soul could bear that kind of abuse. That bit of soul wasn’t enough to free me from being a Valefar. It wasn’t enough to lift the curse that binds me to Kreturus.” He looked haunted, revealing a memory filled with pain that he didn’t want to relive. He bargained with Kreturus.

And lost.

I threw my arms around him and kissed his cheek. He wouldn’t look me in the eye, so I placed my hands on his cheeks, and turned his face toward me. Looking him in the eyes I said, “It was still you who saved me. It was your soul, no matter how tiny, that saved me the night Jake tried to kill me.”

The intensity of his stare worried me. He heard my words, but it wasn’t enough. He shook his head, disagreeing with me. “It was also my rancid soul that made you what you are. Ivy I did this to you. I set this whole prophecy into motion. It wasn’t you. It was me. I’m the one to blame, and it was all because I couldn’t accept my fate and live the life I’d been handed.” A violet ring formed around his blue eyes as he spoke. Rage stirred within him as he took on a vacant expression, no longer looking at me, but staring at nothing. Life as a Valefar was a horrible injustice and there was no way to change that.

I nodded, “You’re preaching to the choir.” His head snapped towards me and I swallowed hard. Whenever he was enraged, I put my soul at risk. He could snap and suck it out of me without another thought. And apparently, I could do the same to him. The idea ignited a hunger inside of me that had been dormant. It wasn’t the bond, and it wasn’t lust, although I had plenty of that. It was raw hunger, but the feeling didn’t come from my stomach like I needed food. It came from somewhere else, deep within, and felt like I needed…I cut off the thought and jumped away from Collin before I could finish the horrifying conclusion. What if he saw that soul lust within me? My arms wrapped tightly around my middle as I paced. What was I becoming? Why was my Valefar side growing? It was becoming stronger and more demanding.

What’s wrong? The thought brushed my mind as his hand touched my shoulder gently.

I turned toward him, forcing a fake smile onto my face. The ring of purple had faded from his eyes. “Nothing,” I lied. “I just know exactly how you feel. I thought my life would be different.
More… normal.
Like right now, I thought I’d be at school, hanging around the theatre, and watching you rehearse, while I painted backdrops and tripped over cans of paint. I thought I’d gripe about sitting through bio and accidentally set the lab table on fire.” I smiled faintly. “Eric, of course, would know exactly what to do and put it out. Shannon and I would ride bikes through the dirt paths at the park as fast as we could without slamming into a tree. My helmet wouldn’t fit right because my hair’s too big. And maybe at the end of the year, before you graduated and left, maybe you would have asked me to prom. Maybe we woulda danced. Maybe things would have been normal, just for one night.” Until I voiced those words, I never realized how much I wanted those things. I wanted a normal life. I wanted the friends, the fun, and the memories that went with it. And most of all, I wanted Collin, and a chance life for us to be happy. A normal life would have been a date.
A movie.
Dinner, maybe.
But not this.
Not Valefar, demons, and this unrelenting wave of crap that crashed over me since the night Jake kissed me. “But there’s no prom in my future.”

Collin gently slid his hand into mine and weaved our fingers together. He smiled softly at me, blue eyes full of expression, “I would have asked you.” He smirked. “Probably after teasing you like crazy, but there is no one that I would have rather gone with.” He pulled me too him, and kissed the top of my head. “We were dealt a crappy hand, Ivy. The only joy in my life comes from knowing you. Come Hell or high water, we’re in this together.”

CHAPTER TEN

I couldn’t relax around Collin anymore. I had hoped that I would, but it was impossible when Kreturus was unaccounted for. And without knowing his exact whereabouts, I was leery of Collin because he could still be possessed. Kreturus held powers that I wasn’t aware of, and it was possible that he had hidden himself inside the one person I would do anything for. That damn demon was smart, and I couldn’t see him vacating for no reason. So the question was, if he wasn’t in Collin, where was he? What was more tempting than this brown-haired, blue-eyed boy who went to Hell for me?

I had no idea.

So I was stuck waiting, agonizing over my decisions and second guessing myself. Every time I opened my mouth, I had to hide my distrust and carefully evaluate what I was telling Collin so that I didn’t accidentally feed Kreturus information that I didn’t want him to have. It was becoming more and more difficult to be around Collin and talk to him about anything. And there was no way that he didn’t notice my behavior, even though he didn’t say anything about it.

Looking over at Collin, he caught my gaze and smiled at me expectantly, “What’s on your mind?”

I looked away, quickly steering my thoughts to some other topic, so he couldn’t sense how apprehensive I felt. He took my look as shyness, but it really wasn’t. My attempts to cover my butt were shameful. I hated lying to him and couldn’t wait for this to be over. Things could go back to normal as soon as Kreturus reared his head.

I asked, “Can you tell where other Valefar are?” Collin arched an eyebrow at me with a surprised look on his face. “I’m not asking if you’re all telekinetic or something, but I was wondering what the other Valefar abilities were. You said you showed me the two that wouldn’t hurt me. I was wondering what the other ones were.” We stopped walking suddenly, and ducked around some stone that protruded from the ground like giant toothpicks.

Collin held his hand out, and I grabbed it as he lifted me over the last mess of boulders. There was caution in his voice, “Why are you asking?”

Uncertain of his question, I responded, “Because I’m half Valefar. What other powers do we have? I was wondering what else I could do?” His hand was in mine and we were trying to maneuver around the lack of path in this section of the Underworld. It was like a landslide covered what was left of an ancient path in stone and rubble. I kept sliding and losing my footing. Collin caught me most of the time. Once, I fell on my butt and shocked my tailbone. It still throbbed. I’d been thinking that healing would have been an awesome power. While Al said I had that ability, I didn’t know how to harness it yet so that I could use it when I wanted. That made me wonder what other Valefar powers there were, and if I could use them. I explained this to Collin, but the only response I received was a blank expression on his face. The bond was useless this time, revealing nothing. Whatever he was thinking, he was hiding it from me.