A Demon's Wrath: Part I (Peachville High Demons) (9 page)

I charged him, but he shifted. I lost my balance
and stumbled against a tree. I didn’t have the power for this
kind of fight anymore. Without Aerden, I was nothing. Weak and
helpless.

Even after ten years, I was broken without him.

I leaned my head against the tree, my throat
constricting and my eyes hot with anger.

“Why, then?” I asked. “Why did
you take him?”

The demon appeared behind me and I braced myself
for pain as he reached out. But instead of hurting me, he placed a
comforting hand on my back. I looked up, confused.

Compassion softened his dark eyes.

“I told you, I am not your enemy,” he
said.

“Then why were you there on the day my
brother was taken?” I asked.

“I didn’t take your brother,” he
said. “But I know who did.”

The Human World – Present Day

Behind me, something moved in the woods at the
outer edge of the clearing.

I stood, expecting to see my brother. Instead, it
was Lea who emerged from the darkness.

“What are you doing way out here?” she
asked. She’d taken her hair down and it flowed like black silk
down her back.

“Just thinking of the past,” I said.
“Do you remember the day we first met Andros?”

Lea smiled. “I remember he kicked our
asses,” she said. “He could have killed us both if he’d
wanted.”

I shook my head. “If it wasn’t for
him, I wonder if I ever would have found out the truth about what
happened to Aerden,” I said. “If you hadn’t found
those black roses—”

“You were never going to stop searching for
the truth,” she said, avoiding my eyes. “Even if you’d
never met Andros that day. Losing your brother changed you. Once it
happened, there was never any real path back to the demon I used to
know. Believe me, I searched.”

She said it with a laugh, but her pain was still
obvious, even after all these years.

“I never meant to hurt you,” I said,
the golden locket heavy in my pocket.

Lea kicked at a cluster of crushed stones. “I
know,” she said.

But she didn’t know. All this time, I had
kept my promise to Aerden. I had never told Lea that the heart stone
I gave her on the day of our engagement was not my truth.

It was his.

My truth belonged to someone else. My heart was
destined for another. It always had been.

Lea turned and brushed at her cheeks. She was so
tough and hard these days, but I knew better. I knew that once upon a
time, she had been soft and beautiful and full of hope.

I felt partially responsible for how drastically
she had changed in the past hundred years.

What would our life had been like if Aerden had
never been taken? What would she have been like?

I sighed and reached into my pocket. I curled my
fist around the golden case, rubbing its smooth surface between my
fingers. There was something I’d been wanting to do for a while
and now, I realized this was the moment.

It was time.

I had already been the cause of so much of her
pain, I hated to hurt her again, but there was only one path to my
future. And in order to move forward, I had to remove certain
obstacles from my past.

According to demon tradition, I was still engaged
to her. Her desperate kiss to lower the veil had been enough to
secure our promise and as long as I held her heart stone, I also held
her heart.

It was time I let her go.

It was time we both moved on, once and for all.

“I never really said thank you for
everything you did for me back then,” I said. “You were
there for me when I thought I’d lost everything, and I know
there’s nothing I could ever do to repay you for that.”

She turned toward me, her eyes gleaming with
tears.

“I loved you,” she said. She lowered
her head and another tear escaped down her cheek. “I still love
you.”

I took my hand from my pocket and opened my palm
flat. The golden locket gleamed in the moonlight. “I need you
to let me go,” I said.

She lifted her hand to her throat and took a slow
breath.

“You’re going to propose to her?”
she asked, raising her chin and straightening her shoulders.

“I love her,” I said. “She’s
my future.”

She bit down on her lip and took several deep
breaths before she finally reached out and took the golden locket
from my outstretched hand. “And I’m your past.”

“Yes,” I said, guilt like a rope
around my heart.

Lea reached around her neck and pulled a thin gold
chain over her head. Hanging on the end of it was the matching locket
I’d given her when we met inside the veil one hundred and one
years ago this day.

She unclasped the chain and slid the locket off
into her hand. She lifted it to her lips and kissed it gently, tears
streaming down her face.

It had been decades since I’d seen her show
such emotion and vulnerability. I hated that I was the cause of such
a deep wound in her heart.

She held the locket out to me and when I reached
for it, she placed her other hand on top of mine and held my gaze for
one long moment. “I don’t know if it was Aerden’s
disappearance or if it was just the way we both changed over time
that made your love for me fade,” she said. “But the
greatest happiness of my life was looking into the light of this
stone and seeing myself through your eyes.”

I held her hand tight for a moment before letting
go. I ached to explain the truth. I wanted to tell her that it wasn’t
her fault. I wanted to tell her that it was never my light inside
that stone.

Instead, I had to hold the secret in my heart,
letting her live with the pain of her beliefs.

But I’d held onto my guilt and my shame for
long enough. I’d sacrificed everything to make up for my
mistakes. I’d paid for the lies I told.

And I had suffered long enough.

I deserved happiness and now that my brother was
free, there was only one thing in this world or the next that I
wanted.

Harper.

And now, on the anniversary of the day I thought
I’d lost everything, I was finally free to make her mine.

COMING SOON

Make sure you are signed up for my mailing list so you can be one of
the first notified when the next part of this story releases. Also, a
second full Demons series will begin in Spring 2014. The first book is
titled EMERALD DARKNESS and will follow both Lea and Harper’s
point-of-view.
Sign up here

Looking for something else to read while you wait?

DEATH'S AWAKENING
is the first book in a brand new series
and is
available now for only 99 cents!

I cannot tell you how exciting it was for me to be back in the world of the
Peachville High Demons. Jackson’s story really began so much farther back than
Harper’s, and I’d always wanted to tell more of what happened between him and
Lea and Aerden when they were younger. I hope you enjoyed Part I of A Demon’s
Wrath. Part II will reveal more of Jackson’s involvement with the Resistance
army and how he discovered the truth about the Order of Shadows.

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With all my heart,

Complete Book List

• Young Adult
   
  
  • Peachville High Demons
    
    • Beautiful Demons
      
    • Inner Demons
      
    • Bitter Demons
      
    • Shadow Demons
      
    • Rival Demons
      
    • Demons Forever
       
      
    • A Demon's Wrath: Part I
      
  • Eternal Sorrows
    
    • Death's Awakening
      
•  
  New Adult
   
  
  • Fairhope
    
    • The Trouble With Goodbye
      
    • The Moment We Began
      
    • A Season For Hope