Tre

Tre

The only sound was the deafening pounding in my ears. A storm was raging. My body was humming, nerve endings dancing with electricity. A brilliant flash of lightning shattered the thick gray of the sky like a spider web. I trailed my fingertips against the pane of glass that separated me from the rain, watching as the lightning faded away. But the longer I stood still the harder it became for me to breathe. I was suffocating. I could feel the hole opening again deep within my core; its edges burning like wildfire. It felt raw, fresh, like watching her die all over again.

Nothing made sense.

It didn’t feel real.

When I had been able to think again I had left the college. I’d run from 3rd Avenue West to my apartment on Terry without a clear thought in my head. No. It was not her. Could not have been her. She hadn’t been real.

Arianna, my Arianna, was dead.

She had died long ago.

It had been so long since I had last seen her beautiful face, but every detail of it was still etched into my memory. I saw her face every night within my dreams, and I had seen it today in the face of that college girl.

My knees must have given way beneath me, because everything swam and I was gripped by the sickening sensation of falling. Samael was there, as though he had been there all along, gripping my face between his powerful hands. His voice was smooth as silk when he spoke. A warm, hushed whisper. It would have been soothing, had his grip not been so forceful. “You must have known that this was coming, mia amore.” The words dripped from his forked tongue and the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. “You must have known that her soul would return.”

She had returned.

It had been her.

My Arianna.

A broken mewling sound escaped my lips before I could force it back, and Samael’s expression melted. In that instant he looked sad, concern lightening the blue of his human eyes to an intense cobalt. The lie was nearly believable.

“Jehona, my darling,” he whispered, caressing the curve of my jaw with his hot fingertips. “My love – “

I hissed, jerking from his grasp.

The concern vanished.

“Fucking bitch!”

His rage was instantly palpable, his human façade trembling at the seams, the demon swimming just beneath the surface of his flawless skin, discoloring its milky perfection.

My fear was instantaneous and paralyzing.

The reeling of my thoughts was stilled by an instinctual sense of self-preservation.

But escape was impossible, and fighting was futile.

“You would sacrifice everything for this human?” He gagged on the word, turning it into something foul. “Your immortality? Your soul?”

So many of my kind; so many of the Forsaken had fallen for human reasons: greed, lust, pride; deadly sins even amongst the condemned. It was why I was one of the only ones left. I had always known my place, and I was good at following orders, keeping myself disconnected from the commonality of the mortal coil. Yet, here I was, unable to answer my own master’s questions.

Here I was… falling.

My silence sent Samael into a fit of pure rage.

The concussive force of his shriek threw me back into the far wall of my apartment.

Something cracked. I hit the ground hard, stunned. My chest heavy, constricted, and there was a shooting pain in my ribs when I tried to move. Samael was there, shoving me back into the carpeted floor, tangling his fist in my knotted hair. He jerked my head back, hard, and I could see more of his true face than I had ever seen before. His perfect complexion had become a myriad of sickly greens. The skin churning, his features changing shape inconsistently. His teeth began to grow, elongating, razor sharp, curving inward. Those beautiful cobalt eyes enlarged and lit from within, blackening. The pitch of them burning, glowing. I could smell the fires of Abaddon, the burning flesh and brimstone.

He stank of it.

When he spoke again it was in two voices, the hissing voice of the demon and the slick, sweet voice of his mortal form. “You will complete this mission,” he commanded. “You will destroy this girl… or you will burn in Abaddon for eternity.”

He wrenched my hair harder, pulling my head farther back, and branded my lips with a vicious kiss, bruising them and bringing tears of pain to my eyes. Then he shoved me back to the floor and was gone.

I cannot be sure how long I had lain there after he had departed. My entire body ached, and I knew from experience that some of my bones had been broken in my impact with the wall. But shock was setting in, and none of it mattered as my mind shut down.