Chapter Two
The choices he had made in his life had led him here. Adamm knew that. He had always believed in accepting responsibility for his own actions, and expected others to do the same.
But he hadn’t really expected to lie dying of a gunshot wound to the throat, his lifeblood spilling from him, pumping from him in hot waves. It hadn’t really come down to this, had it?
Year after year, he’d been the meanest son of a bitch. A fighter, a thief, a witch—so fucking tough, nobody had messed with him. He’d spent his life sneering at the rules, taking what he wanted, when he wanted.
In general, his life had been about being one evil mother fucker.
He had started out with good intentions—he could always tell himself that, trying to take care of his sister, and then the gang. It wasn’t easy, keeping a group of near-desperate witches and other paranormal freaks in line. They had to stay under the radar, because if they didn’t, they’d end up getting hunted down and people would have died.
At least now, it was just him.
Nobody from the gang…and not his sister, either. She was gone, years gone. Hell, he hadn’t seen Lyssa in years, not since she tearfully begged him to walk away from this life.
Walk away from this life…a fairy tale. It wasn’t an option, not for him. How could he leave behind the people who counted on him? How could he walk away from them? Some of them were little more than kids. He couldn’t walk away from them—so he told himself.
Adamm knew, though, he just hadn’t wanted to try.
He felt the pulse of blood flowing from him with every second, but those seconds seemed to slow to a crawl. They crept by as he tried to breathe through the blood clogging his throat. Everything around him started to dim. The blackness closed in around him, as in the distance, sirens started to wail.
They wouldn’t get here in time, even if they were coming for him.
Not much time left. Even he couldn’t heal a wound like this. Nobody could.
Nobody, Adamm?
Adamm suspected his mind was playing tricks on him now. The dark fog had suddenly brightened, painfully bright, a light streaming down from above, making his eyes water. And who in the hell had just spoken?
I did.
Turning his head, he blinked at the apparition that appeared before him. Damnation. Who in the hell—
Not hell, Adamm. Not heaven either. We’re in between.
He wanted to laugh, but was afraid to do so. That would make the wound bleed worse, if he didn’t choke on his blood again. And wasn’t this taking an awful long time…dying?
You’re not bleeding anymore, Adamm Cochran. Stand up, man…and talk to me.
That commanding voice had his back rising. Adamm didn’t fucking listen to anybody.
That is the problem, man…you stopped listening to those around you a long time ago. Made some very, very bad choices. I’m disappointed. I had high hopes for you, the man dressed in glowing white said, shaking his head, his black eyes dark and brooding. Somewhere…you made some very bad choices, and didn’t listen to the voices that tried to steer you clear.
“Who in the hell are you?” Adamm asked, gingerly touching his throat. The flesh was whole, unmarked. “What in the fuck?”
The man sighed. Your language was always atrocious. If only that was the only thing bad, you wouldn’t be here. But we’ve got a lot of fixing to do with you, and your filthy mouth is the least of my concerns. As to who I am…I am Sansan. Your guardian angel.
Adamm couldn’t help it. He laughed, he crowed, he snickered until tears were streaming down his face. Finally, he gasped for air and asked, “Is this some kind of illusion? Did Tabby have anything to do with it? Because that bullet to the throat felt awfully real. Only a healer could do something like that.”
The man blinked. And to their left, a huge image sprang to life, and Adamm felt as though he was in a movie theatre, watching as the film rolled on the wall. Only this was his life—or his death, rather. Paramedics hovered over his body, talking, as a man in dark leather jacket approached, carrying a bag in his hand. His face was grim, tired. And after kneeling by Adamm’s body for a few seconds, the weariness in his expression only grew.
The man shook his head and reached up, gently closing Adamm’s open eyes. And Adamm felt his touch, felt the impersonal hands that lifted his body and placed it on a stretcher, felt the sheet that covered his face.
This is very real, Adamm Cochran. And if you want a chance to undo some of the evil you have done…listen up.
Adamm licked his lips, sitting up slowly and staring at the man in front of him. He looked…ethereal, all glowing clothes, hair and skin…except those eyes. Those eyes were dark and full of pain.
“What is going on?” Adamm asked, forcing the question out through stiff lips.
You died. You’ve been dead about ten minutes, on Earth. You had to go bad, didn’t you?
Adamm’s body started to shake. Dead. If he was dead, then it should just be blackness, he shouldn’t be seeing this man in front of him. Unless…unless…
Come on, stop being a coward. You are dead, and I am standing before you. There has always been more than just the life you live—you just blew it off. Well, it isn’t darkness I offer you. You have the choice…repentance or torment.
“It doesn’t work like that,” Adamm said stiffly, shaking his head. “They always told me I’d have to pay. But it would be in hell. There was no mention of repentance.”
Oh yes. And man knows everything there is to know, doesn’t he? the man mocked, folding his face into a mask of fake solemnity. Grow up.
Adamm jerked, hearing that mocking voice, that dry command. “Would you explain what in the fuck is going on?” he demanded, fear edging in and giving him the comfort of false bravado.
Watch your language, if you would. As to what is going on? Choices, Adamm. You are making a choice. Do you want hell…or do you want the life you were meant to live? Sansan asked, starting to circle around Adamm, his gaze penetrating.
“What life? I lived my life the only way that was possible—damn it, if you aren’t happy with it, maybe you should have given me some other choices,” Adamm snarled. He was starting to understand now, though.
This was real.
Now, I had nothing to do with it. As to your life, well, we all have the one we are given and you had the same choices we’ve all faced…good or evil…do I serve others? Or do I serve only myself? Sansan replied easily. He started to sit, and Adamm blinked as a soft white chair simply appeared beneath him. You see, that is where you present our problem. You made very, very bad choices. But they weren’t always done to further yourself or your power. In fact, they were rarely for those reasons. You always sought to protect those who had entrusted themselves to you. True evil doesn’t do that. But a person good in heart doesn’t make the choices you’ve made. So we are at an impasse.
“Who is we?” Adamm demanded.
We…perhaps I should say I. Most have given up on you. Myself…I haven’t decided. And so I asked for this.
“This what?”
A chance to fix what you did wrong. Sansan studied him closely, a tiny smile on his mouth, as though he knew exactly what was running through Adamm’s mind.
Adamm fought the urge to flinch under that gaze, feeling as though everything in life he had ever done was being measured. And he came up lacking. “I took care of my responsibilities,” he said tightly, swallowing the knot of fear that had formed in his throat. “Right or wrong, I did what I thought was best.”
No…you did what came easiest. Those choices weren’t always motivated by selfish desires, but they were still bad choices. However, this isn’t about responsibility, it’s about heart. You shouldn’t have one. So why do I look at you and still see one? Sansan asked, the voice Adamm heard speaking inside his head dropping to a mere whisper. Why should you care if others around you die? True evil looks only after itself. You look after others.
“Can we just get this over with?” Adamm asked in a dull monotone. “I don’t know what in the hell you want, but I’d rather not sit here and discuss my lacks of morals all day.”
Judgment, my friend. We all must face judgment for our sins. But we can’t quite put you in the hole you were supposed to go in. You don’t fit. This leads me to believe that if you had realized how much pain you were causing those around you, and complete strangers, you wouldn’t have walked down the road you walked.
Adamm rose, rubbing one damp palm against the other, then lifted his hands and stared at them. You still get that cold sweat when you’re dead? he wondered. He slid his hands in his pockets, fisting them to keep from fidgeting any more. With a scowl, he asked, “So what are you planning on doing? Turning back time?”
Sansan smiled politely. Not exactly…although you will have the chance to right the wrongs you have done unto others in the past. If you are successful in your quest, then perhaps we will not have to close our eyes as we turn you over to…them.
“Them who?” Adamm asked warily, his eyes jumping around as the brilliant light from above faded, replaced by an oppressive darkness. A cold wind ripped through the air, coming from nowhere. And in midair, a door opened, like the doors of a storm cellar, opening so that they were looking down into a dark pit.
The air stank, foul and putrid, turning Adamm’s stomach. And he heard the tormented moans of the damned. “What is that place?” he asked as something dark and menacing floated by the door, staring at Adamm with greedy eyes. In its arms, the thing held a misty form, one that opened her mouth and screamed as she stared at Adamm.
That is hell, Sansan said quietly, his eyes darkening with pain as he stared into the pit. Those are the souls who haven’t wanted to be saved, who haven’t cared for anything beyond themselves.
His head was moving back and forth, and he distantly heard himself whisper, “No, that’s not real.”
Sansan sighed. It is all too real…that is where you will be if you do not learn the error of your ways.
A tension drained from Adamm’s shoulders. A chance…he had a chance.
Yes. A chance. But you only have two months.
And before Adamm could even question that, he felt some outside force shoving at his body, pushing, shoving, until he fell. Or part of him did, because he could still see up, see an ephemeral image of his body leaning over, trying to grasp his hand as he fell.
***
Shit!
The soft hum of machinery, a beeping of some sort and the smell of antiseptic flooded his senses. Damn it, what in the hell had happened? Then he remembered…the gun shot, the hot flood of his blood as it pumped from him. Fuck…must be in a hospital. Made sense, the noise of machinery, life support probably. He would need a hell of a lot of support, considering how much blood he suspected he had lost.
The bastards that had shot him had been from a rival gang, led by a witch who made Adamm look nice. And that took a lot. Because nice was one thing he was not.
The bad thing about squaring off with others like himself—they knew his weaknesses. Knew that he had a few, not many, but a few…and Dominiqua had known how to exploit them. The bullets hadn’t been regular bullets, but hollow tipped, filled with mullein, onion and clover. Herbs that had long been known to repel sorcery, witches and evil. And Adamm was known for all three. Damn it. Should have killed that bitch when I had the chance.
But choking the life out of her after he had just gotten done doing the nasty with her all night hadn’t appealed to him. Maybe he was getting soft. That might explain why he had tired of her…the rage, anger and malice he had sensed rolling from her had quickly sickened him.
Just not soon enough to keep him from fucking her.
He forced his lids to open, staring at the white ceiling overhead. As he took account, he decided he was good and fucked up. There was a mask on his face, feeding oxygen in, drying the hell out of his mouth. A tube in his nose, patches all over his chest. He shifted his head, amazed that his neck wasn’t hurting like wildfire.
With hands that shook from weakness, Adamm reached up, probing his nose gingerly. Then he stopped.
Something felt wrong.
He studied his hands. Something looked wrong. What in the hell?
His hands didn’t look right. They were…different. Adamm had always been a pale son of a bitch, burning easily in the summer sun. His hair, so light a blond it looked almost white, had been worn brutally short, and his body was a big, bulky form he cared for religiously. He could have passed for a pro wrestler, with his bulk and size, standing at six feet nine, unable to buy a damned thing off the rack. Huge hands…
But the hands he was staring at were just average size. Pale, but not the kind of pale one got just from avoiding the daylight, not an unhealthy pallor, which Adamm had possessed. This was a smooth, clear pale, the skin he was looking at, and his hands—wide palmed, long narrow fingers. They looked like the hands of…somebody kinder. Everything about Adamm had been near brutal. From his magic, to his manner, to his size.
“Okay,” he whispered, his voice nearly soundless behind the mask. His throat was so damned dry it hurt and speaking was like rubbing ground-up glass into an open wound. “What in the hell is going on?”
Forgotten already? a soft, melodic voice murmured to him.
Whipping his head around, Adamm searched for the voice. Familiar…it evoked a deep sense of fear. But he couldn’t see anybody. With a sigh, he rolled his head to the side, wondering if he had lost his mind.
Most likely, because now he was seeing a man in the reflective surface on the metal rails on his bed. But when he turned his head to look for the man himself, he wasn’t there.
Damn it, he knew this man…Sansan…
Like a movie in fast-forward, he was back in the bright place, surrounded by the white light, as Sansan spoke to him of his evils.
Are you ready? Sansan asked him now. You’ve got so much making up to do…let’s start at the beginning.
And Adamm felt himself being sucked back inside the darkness of sleep, only he wasn’t asleep. He was being forced into his own past, back to all the places in his life where he had been given an opportunity to do something different. Only he had chosen the road that had been familiar, known to him. Even though part of him hated himself, and every bad choice he had made.
Yes…that is the part I sensed within—that is why I begged for this one last chance. Sansan was by his side now, and they were standing outside, staring through a window…at the movie of Adamm’s life.
Age Fifteen
Lyssa was going to be the death of him. If it wasn’t for her, he wouldn’t be standing here. If it wasn’t for her, he wouldn’t still be living in Detroit, with its frozen bitch winters. If it wasn’t for her, he might be able to get more than a few hours sleep a night.
Worrying about her, trying to keep them both fed and safe, he was going nuts. Something had to give.
If he didn’t get them into someplace where she could get a decent night’s sleep, get clean…and get clean clothes, all the shit needed to convince the damned welfare people that she had a home, a mother, a family. She’d be taken away if they knew the two of them were on their own.
Hell, they’d been on their own for the past three years. He had been doing okay, staying in the basement of a friend’s house. The mom hadn’t given a damn, as long as Adamm brought home money for her, helping feed her ongoing love of the not-so-legal drugs. Coke, meth, Exotica…you name it, she wanted it. But then she had died of an overdose, and the stepdad started in on them. Noticing Lyssa.
That had been six months ago. They’d had a few months of peace but then, one night, Adamm had gotten home earlier than expected. He had found the stepdad standing in the doorway of the room the siblings shared. Adamm hadn’t touched him—not that night. He’d waited until Lyssa was at school. When Lyssa was gone, that was when he’d gone after the man. Big and strong for his age, he had beaten the sick fuck into unconsciousness.
They never went back to that house. Ever since then, it had been an ongoing contest to outwit the state officials.
He didn’t want Lyssa dropping out of school like he had done. He wanted better for her. More for her.
They had been on their own for three years, ever since their pathetic excuse for a mom had taken off with a boyfriend. He hadn’t had much choice but to quit. When the new school year started, he never went back. He’d spend his days scrounging up money to take care of himself and his sister. The first few months, he’d just stolen what he could, sell it and use that money to pay for what they needed. Later on, he’d gotten a fake ID and worked where he could.
It had been almost easy—he had always looked older than he was. And he had used sleight of hand, thievery and the magic he had been born with to do whatever needed doing.
But now the school officials were getting suspicious. Lyssa didn’t always make it to school on time, and she was often too damned dirty. They were no longer buying the forged notes Adamm sent in and he knew it was just a matter of time.
This was the last thing he could think of.
And it had to work.
You could just go to the damned welfare fuckers, part of him argued. He stood outside the house on South Third Street and licked his lips. The metallic taste of fear was heavy in his mouth. They’d take care of her. And you, too. A few years, you’d be done, and you’d have a diploma. Lyssa would be warm, clean…
No. He wasn’t letting strangers take his sister. And he knew what he looked like. Not too many foster parents would risk taking in somebody who looked as mean as he did.
“You going in there or what?” a low voice asked from behind him.
He turned, staring at the cute little brunette in front of him. Her big dark eyes studied him curiously. She cocked a brow at him. “They aren’t very nice people,” she told him, lifting one bare shoulder. The skimpy bikini top she wore with a pair of shorts revealed a hot little body and Adamm felt his heart kick up a notch.
“Then how come you’re here?” he asked.
A smile, sad, he thought, curved up her lips. “I live here.” She looked him over from head to toe, and Adamm got the impression that she saw beneath the surface all too well. “You’re looking for Jack, aren’t you?”
Jack McGregor was definitely the man he was there to see. It was no secret who lived there. Still, Adamm curled his lip at her. “That’s my business, not yours.”
“You really sure you want to talk to him?” she asked, acting like she hadn’t heard him speak.
No. He wasn’t sure—well, actually, he was sure—he was damned sure he didn’t want to talk to Jack McGregor, but he was out of choices.
No. You’ve got other choices. You just don’t like them.
It all added up to the same thing as far as he was concerned. The other choices he had didn’t leave him any sort of control so they weren’t choices. He stared at the brunette until she sighed.
“Stubborn,” she murmured.
The quiet voice inside his head got louder and louder. Stubborn, yes. Maybe even too stubborn—no. No, he wasn’t being stubborn, he was being smart, making the best choice available.
“Well, head on in. Unless you want to be smart and just walk away.” For a second, her eyes seemed to gleam and then she blinked and they were just pretty, dark brown eyes again. “Getting in there is easy, if you got what it takes. Getting out is damn near impossible.”
“I don’t need the lecture, thanks.” Adamm fought the urge to look away from those insightful eyes.
Another sigh slipped past her lips and she shrugged. “Your choice…” She turned her head and stared at the small porch, her mouth a straight, unsmiling line. Angling her chin towards the front door, she said, “You know the way?”
He knew she wasn’t talking about how to get inside the house. It was a little more complicated than putting one foot in front of the other. It involved two unsmiling characters standing at the front door. “Yeah,” he said, his voice flat and cold. “I know the way.”
She studied him for a long moment. The warm light in her brown eyes died, fading away and turning her warm gaze cold. Then she turned around and walked away.
Adamm had no doubts about his own abilities. He had what it took to get through the doors—the ability to fight his way past the lower-level witches acting as bodyguards, alarm and fodder. One of them was dead by the time Adamm was done and although it had left him sick inside, although it had come down to kill or be killed, he’d taken a life and he couldn’t regret it.
Not if it helped keep Lyssa safe.
Safe…and maybe even happy.
Happy—something he hadn’t ever hoped for, but for a while he found it, too. With Eden. The boss’s kid sister.
Eden McGregor hadn’t been lying when she said she lived there. Her brother was the head of the gang Adamm had been hearing about, in whispered tones, for months. She was one of the few people there who didn’t seem to embrace the life they were living. She went to school religiously, went to church, despite the laughter and catcalls it seemed to evoke among the rest of them, teasing that got louder and more cruel when her brother wasn’t around.
But she didn’t care. Eden wasn’t going to stay there—it was written all over her face. And she was the one person there that Lyssa connected with. That wasn’t too bad. She was going to school, clean and on time.
The boss had done the unexpected. Jack McGregor had worked a miracle. No school officials were calling. The heat was off them.
After a few weeks, Jack started expecting payment. Real witches in his gang were a rarity. Jack was one. Eden was one, but she refused to use her gifts to help them. She would heal, but nothing else. A fucking waste, because her power was astounding. Besides her, there were a few others, but most were just psychic, or just gifted enough to make them exceptional thieves.
Jack wanted some stuff done only a real witch could. And two could do it even better.
***
Looking back, Adamm had to wonder if maybe he couldn’t have fought it harder. Had to wonder if maybe it wouldn’t have been better for Lyssa if he had just let the state place them both in foster care. Maybe then she wouldn’t have ended up hating him.
He watched the movie montage made up of his life and felt the ugly, bitter taste of regret. There had been other choices, but once he started up with Jack, those choices became fewer, farther in between. Once he’d started up with Jack, there hadn’t been an easy way out. But he hadn’t realized just how deep he was until it was too late.
Most of it started out simple enough, just a bare step up from the stealing he’d been doing as long as he could remember.
But then the jobs got bigger and before he knew it, he was lost inside the gang, so lost he couldn’t have gotten out with GPS, a road map and an entire truckload of bread crumbs.
You didn’t fight it much, did you?
Adamm jerked, flinching as the words reminding him that he wasn’t exactly alone. Turning his head, he stared at the man beside him. “I made a choice. I took care of my sister,” he said as a knot settled in his throat.
There were other choices…like this time.
And he was shoved back in time. Again.
Age Twenty
They were cold and wet, standing there in the rainy woods. But Jack deserved a decent burial. Part of him was ashamed. Jack had tried, had cared for them in his own way. The man deserved a real burial, some place where they could see him without skulking in the shadows.
Eden hadn’t wanted this. She wanted her brother laid to rest the way anybody should be…a visitation, a suit, some place where she could go and place flowers when she visited him.
As Eden stood there, rain running down her face, mingling with the tears, he wished he could think of another way. A way to give Eden what she had wanted for her brother—the right way to say goodbye.
But it couldn’t happen. It just couldn’t. Jack had been murdered in his sleep, by pure magic. And the results had been ugly. There would have been an investigation, one that came with questions none of them were equipped to handle.
Eden was hurting so bad—and Adamm knew not all of it was from her brother’s death. She wanted more, for Adamm, for herself…for all of them.
She wanted to stop hiding in the shadows. Wanted to stop living there. She wanted to leave behind the darkness of her past. Wanted him to do the same. Wanted the same for Jack, but now it wasn’t a choice that Jack would ever have.
As two of the men shoveled dirt over Jack’s still, disfigured corpse, Eden looked up and met his eyes.
“Now what do we do?” she asked quietly.
Adamm didn’t have any answers for her.
One of the others said softly, “We go our separate ways now. Hope the bastard that killed Jack doesn’t come after us.”
Lyssa wrapped an arm around Eden’s waist. Voices murmured, and Adamm sensed their thoughts. Some agreed—split up, get away, very far away. Some were almost relieved…others were scared.
No. They weren’t doing that…Jack had kept them together and alive for years. His death shouldn’t be enough to split up a band of brothers and sisters. It should make them more determined to stay together, to keep doing what Jack had started.
What is so great about what Jack started? We steal, we lie, we use people. Adamm tried to silence the voice, and the knowledge that some of them had made different choices. Eden had. So had Lyssa.
But they were together. All of them. They should stay that way.
“We don’t split up,” he said, his voice sharp in the darkness. “We’re more vulnerable that way. If we want to survive, we stay together.”
“We could leave,” Eden said, an undercurrent of steel in her voice.
“Leave,” he echoed. Then he shook his head. “Hell, no. This is our territory, Eden. It’s the territory your brother fought for. Are you going to let it go that easily?”
“It’s the territory my brother died for,” she countered. “Yes. Yes, if it means living, if it means having a life, I’d let it go in a heartbeat. I don’t want this, Adamm.” She turned her head, looked at the men and women, barely more than kids, that stood with them. “Do you want this? Is this how you want to end your life? Is this what you want for yourselves?”
Some of them looked her in the eye.
But most of them moved to quietly stand behind Adamm. They wanted to live. They didn’t care how they did it.
She shook her head and turned away. Lyssa caught her hand and the two young women stared at each other, a silent conversation taking place. Eden broke contact first, giving Lyssa a sad smile and then tugging away. Adamm caught up with her and followed along as they left the others behind. Catching her arm, he turned her around, crowding her up against a tree. “Tell me you’re not leaving,” he said quietly.
She wouldn’t look at him. “I’m so tired of hiding in the dark, Adamm.”
“People like us don’t have a choice,” he said, pushing her wet curls back from her face. He brushed his lips against her cheek, breathing in her scent. She smelled like rain and vanilla.
“We have choices.” Her voice was grim. She slid away from him and turned to face him, wrapping her arms around her middle. “We’ve got plenty of choices. You don’t have to steal to live. You don’t have use your magic to bully others into paying you for protection.”
She spat the word out like it left an ugly taste in her mouth, and he suspected it did. This was an old argument, one she’d had with her brother. One she’d had with him, too. Adamm shook his head. “I’m a dropout, Eden. The only option I’ve got is finding a job at a fast-food joint, flipping burgers. Anything else, they want training and they’ll run a bunch of background checks. I’m not real big on the idea of going to jail.”
“Then maybe you shouldn’t have broken the law,” she said, her voice wooden. She shook her head when he would have spoken. “I have to get away from here…I can’t breathe.”
He went to grab her arm and she evaded. “Where are you going?”
“I just need to walk.” She shot him a baleful look and added, “But don’t worry. I’m not leaving. At least not right now.”
She wanted to. It was in her eyes. It was a knowledge that haunted Adamm as he let her walk away from him, one that lingered with him later that night as he sat at a bar, drinking Jack Daniels straight from the bottle. It burned a fiery trail down his throat, warmed his belly, but didn’t do a damn thing to ease the pain inside.
“I heard about Jack.”
It was an unwelcome voice. Sliding his gaze to the left, he met Dominiqua’s coal-black eyes and then looked away. Dominiqua was one of Jack’s “friendly” rivals—friendly as in they’d decided they’d kill each other if they ever fought, so they had an unspoken truce.
Except that unspoken truce was over now and if Adamm knew anything about the woman, she was going to size him up, decide if she wanted to take him down or just take him over. Adamm wasn’t interested in either.
The only thing he wanted was oblivion. An escape from the pain over losing a friend, an escape from the pain he’d seen in Eden’s eyes.
Dominiqua laid a hand on his thigh and leaned in. “That bottle isn’t going to make it any better.”
He closed his eyes as his body responded. She slipped that hand higher, and higher, until she could trace the outline of his cock with her fingertips. “I can make it better…if you’ll let me.”
He tossed back another gulp of whiskey and then glanced at her. “Get the fuck away from me.”
“Hmmm. Poor baby.” She wiggled and shimmied around until she had draped herself across his lap. Nobody in the bar so much as looked their way. She could strip naked, go down on him or jump up and dance on the bar and unless she invited the attention of others, nobody would dare look directly at them.
He jerked his head back as she tried to kiss him, used the whiskey to wash away her taste. “Leave me alone,” he snarled, reaching down and closing a hand around her wrist. He squeezed until her bones ground together.
Dominiqua whimpered, but not with pain. Under her lashes, she stared at him, her gaze hot with arousal. She touched him again, and this time she didn’t just use her hands.
She used her magic and it burned along his skin. His power responded, leaping to vibrant life. Power rose, mingled, swelled…he should have shoved it down and blocked it off.
Instead, he drew it in. What little control he had shattered under the intoxicating bite of magic. Drunk on the whiskey, drunk on the magic and blinded by grief, when Dominiqua touched him again, he didn’t try to push her away.
***
Adamm turned away, the hot burn of shame crawling under his skin. Feeling like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar, he averted his gaze as Sansan said, It didn’t help the pain, did it?
“I never thought it would,” he snapped, his voice sharp. He hadn’t thought at all. That was the bottom line. And that was exactly what he’d told Eden the next morning.
She’d known. Without him saying anything, she had known. It was the first time he’d broken her heart, and if he’d been a better man, it would have been the last time. He would have let her walk away, just like she wanted.
But he hadn’t been able to do it.
No…he hadn’t wanted to do it.
Swallowing, he made himself meet Sansan’s eyes. “I thought I was doing what was best, keeping us all together.”
You were wrong.
“We stayed alive. That’s what counts.” Adamm scowled and looked away, but he ended up looking back at Sansan anyway. The other man—angel—whatever—was a better sight than reliving his life in full, living color.
The scenes replaying now were two-fold. The morning after, when he faced Eden and realized she’d known about Dominiqua…and the very moment he’d woken up in the bed next to the other witch and realized what in the hell he’d done.
“We stayed alive,” he repeated. It sounded hollow, even to him.
There is so much more to it than that. How much did your life mean, the way you lived it? What do you think you’d find on your tombstone, Adamm? We stayed alive. There should be so much more than that. There should be love. There should be happiness. All you have is emptiness.
Age Twenty-Three
He rolled over, cuddling Eden’s soft body close, his chest heaving as he fought to catch his breath. Her snug pussy still gripped him convulsively and under him, her body shuddered.
She had been trying to walk away again.
He wasn’t letting her go. Bad enough he had lost his sister—Lyssa had joined the military the day she turned eighteen, and she had run away from this life. He hadn’t seen her in three years, and he suspected he wouldn’t ever see her again.
He wasn’t going to lose Eden, too.
“You feel so good,” he whispered, kissing her sweat-dampened curls, running his hand up and down her side.
She was silent. There had been a time when she would have murmured something back to him. But the past month, things had been different between them.
A month ago, he’d been forced to kill another witch, and it had been somebody that Eden had known. A friend, in a way. A boy she’d been trying to help.
Eden hadn’t talked to him for weeks after. Three days after the boy had died, she’d tried to leave Adamm for the first time. He had felt it, the silence of the house as he walked in, a silence caused by her absence. With a few furious words, he’d turned her mirror into his own personal tracking device and he had seen her, walking to the train station, a pack flung over her shoulder, her head down, a hand reaching up to wipe away the tears rolling down her face.
“The hell I’m letting you walk away,” he had sworn. He’d caught up with her just before she would have boarded the train that took her away from him.
A voice had whispered to him, the same one that asked him, always…if he was doing the right thing. Or simply what was easier. This time the voice had said, Let her go. She doesn’t want this life.
But he had wanted her. So he had guilted her into coming back. He played on her emotions, played on the grief she still felt for Jack, even though the other man had been gone for three years. She’d given in and since then, Adamm had kept her close. Tried to find some tenderness, give her some romance, the softer, kinder things she’d deserved. Hoping to hear her say once more, “I love you, Adamm.”
But she never said it to him again.
Sighing, he tucked her closer and rolled to his side. “I love you,” he said, forcing the words past his tight throat.
It wasn’t easy for him to say, even though he did love her. But she didn’t say it back. All she did was lay there, rigid and quiet, until eventually, she fell asleep in his arms.
Adamm brushed his fingers through her hair and kissed her forehead. Sooner or later, things would get better…they’d be the way they were. Eden would be as she used to be.
He had to believe that. Had to.
But as he drifted off to sleep, he wondered if maybe he was fooling himself. And this time, the voice wasn’t quite so easily ignored.
Days passed.
Things didn’t get better.
Eden rarely spoke to him at all, and when she did, it was to tell him to let her go. He let her, because he knew that even if she tried to leave, she couldn’t get far. She couldn’t really leave him, because she didn’t really want to.
Until finally one day, she did just that.
That morning started out pretty much like any other. He left the big house that served as both home and his “base”, so to speak. Eden was sitting in the living room, watching TV and acting like she was completely unaware of him. That was the last time he saw her. Staring glassy-eyed at the TV, not so much as blinking when he bent to kiss her.
When he came back, she was gone. He knew it the second he crossed through the door, felt it, like a shiver running down his spine. She was gone. Tearing down the hall to her room, he tried to do the same thing he’d done months earlier.
But when he laid a hand on her mirror and tried to track her, there was nothing.
“What the…”
Fury tore into him.
Pain gnawed at him.
Wild magic, just barely contained, snapped in his hands and it took every last shred of control he had to keep it trapped inside him. Eden was gone. Dazed, half-dumb, he turned in a slow circle, staring at her bed…a bed he rarely let her sleep in. He stared at the narrow closet and the ruthlessly organized clothes. His gaze fell on her dresser last and that was where he saw it.
A note.
And the remnants of something that turned his heart to ashes.
Angelica and mullein. She’d gone and made a charm, one that would keep him from tracking her. Numb, he reached for the note and read it.
I can’t live this life anymore. I need more. I want more for myself than this…and for you. But you won’t take it. I’ll have to find it myself.
I loved you, Adamm.
Eden.
Feeling half-dead inside, he dropped down onto her bed and sat there. For hours he sat there, with the ghost of her voice taunting him.
I loved you, Adamm.
I loved you, Adamm.
I loved you, Adamm.
***
She really did love you, Sansan said, his voice gentle.
“I know.” Adamm closed his eyes, blocking out the image of Eden’s face. It had been years since he’d let himself think about her. Losing her had torn a hole in his heart, a wound that never truly healed.
Adamm had never saw Eden again, never heard from her again. He’d searched for her…for a while. But then he’d simply stopped trying. Over time, he’d forgotten about Eden, or at least, he convinced himself he had.
But Sansan wasn’t going to buy that self-delusional argument.
Losing her hurt you, didn’t it? He narrowed shrewd, dark eyes and watched Adamm as though he knew every last thought inside the man’s head.
Adamm clenched his jaw, remaining silent. He didn’t let himself think of Eden very often. He couldn’t. It hurt too much, that ragged, still-bleeding wound that would never heal.
She hurt like that, every day…until she finally walked away from you.
Sansan’s eyes were guileless as Adamm lifted his head and glared at him. “You have to rub that in, buddy?”
I’m not your buddy—I am your guide.
“If you’re my fucking guide, then you did a shitty job. Shouldn’t a guide have led me somewhere else?” Adamm growled.
Sansan laughed sadly. Boy, I tried. Every time you heard a little voice, asking if that was really the best road…who do you think that was? Your conscience? That’s a good one. You don’t have one. You destroyed it, purposely, willfully. Sansan’s eyes turned back to the endless film that showed yet more of Adamm’s life.
One particular scene slowed to a crawl. It showed a young man—the witch Eden had befriended, the boy she’d tried to guide to a better life.
His name had been D’Andre and he’d been a cocky kid with a cocky smile. But then he fell in with Dominiqua and that cocky charm turned to anger, self-doubt, fear.
It was the witch he’d killed…the one that had made Eden turn away from him.
Do you remember him? Sansan asked softly.
Adamm wanted to deny it. But even as he tried to form the words, his enigmatic guide lifted a brow.
He was only nineteen, unsure of what he was doing. He may have walked away from the life he was living, may have become something more. Eden made him think he could do just that. But now he’ll never have the chance. It’s almost pathetic, you getting a chance and him not.
“Why am I getting one?” Adamm asked, his voice tight and rusty as the images flashed back in time, replayed the moment when the life faded from D’Andre’s eyes. Replaying it…over and over…until Adamm thought he’d go mad from it.
I begged for it. But if it had happened after this, right after…I would have just let you go. Sansan’s voice sounded odd and when Adamm looked at him, he saw tears running down the man’s face, silent, steady tears, as he watched a life ended.
He felt like sobbing himself. The boy had been foolish, a pawn thrown at him by Dominiqua, the witch who ran the other gang. The rivalry between them hadn’t ever managed to be a “friendly” one, because she was too fucking pissed that Adamm had walked away from her.
Watching the boy die, over and over, Adamm realized there had been innocence there. Foolish, young, a little tarnished, but still innocence. The boy had been alone, just trying to find his way. Adamm had made damn sure that would never happen.
“How much longer are you going to keep this up?” Adamm asked, his voice gritty, his chest hot and tight. Shame and guilt curled through his belly and he felt raw all over.
Hmmm…maybe you’ve seen enough. For now. It is time for you to get started anyway. And here comes your first chance…
Adamm sucked air in. One moment he was talking with Sansan. The next…hurting. Pain ripped through his body, through his veins and he wanted to scream with it, but he couldn’t. It was like liquid fire coursing through his veins, that pain, and every stuttering beat of his heart made it worse.
“He’s back,” a voice said from overhead.
“…too damned close. Doesn’t make any sense,” somebody said quietly. “He’s been here for so long, and stable.”
“…waking up?”
Adamm lifted his lashes, staring up, teeth clenched as the pain continued to burn his veins. A head was in his vision, a black man, his eyes wide, concerned, as he stared down.
“Hey, man…welcome back to life,” the guy murmured, squeezing his arm reassuringly.
Adamm tried to speak, but couldn’t.
“Don’t try to talk yet.” A woman, her voice low, husky…sweet. “Dr. Harris here is going to look you over. You’ve been through the wringer.”
He rolled his head to the side. Then he felt his heart trip inside his chest.
What an…angel, he thought, his throat tightening, blood pounding through his veins with every tortured beat of his heart. She gave him a small, hesitant smile and he felt it in the pit of his stomach.
“Well, Jonah MacLean…you are one lucky son of a gun,” the man said. “Three years in a coma. Look at you…”
Jonah MacLean…? Okay, who the hell is Jonah MacLean?
Then the other words finally penetrated though. Three years in a coma…