Revenant (36 page)

When
Gage saw me, he reached out. “Colina!”
Our eyes
met
and his spell wrapped
its tentacles around me once more.

I’m being taken away from my
love, my heart.

“Gage!”
I screamed out as I was carried across the square and into the trees.
Gage tried to turn and follow, but my
pack redoubled their attacks, and he was forced to stand and fight. I tried to
gather my will and stop them—but the thought wouldn’t form. My feelings
tumbled, warring with my conscious mind for control. I didn’t have a chance to
decide before Gage
disappeared from sight
as I was carried away.

I screamed, pounding my fists against a wall
of muscle, all to no avail. I looked down at the ground rushing below me. When
I was finally let down, who would I be facing—an enemy or an ally? I
mentally steeled myself for whatever I was to face as we moved quickly into the
forest.

The
trees
rushed by
. As we moved deeper into
the wilderness, the sounds of death from the battlefield faded. I was helpless,
tears streaming down my face, crying out the name of the man I loved while I
was carried into the night like a rag doll.

The farther away I got from Gage, the clearer my mind
became. All the warm and fuzzy thoughts finally slid away. In their place, I
felt a deep hatred and a burning frustration.

“Put
me down!” I shouted. I slammed my fist into the kidney of the person carrying
me and heard a male grunt of pain, but we kept moving.

I
started to thrash
around,
desperate to
get free. After a few more minutes of clawing at my kidnapper, I found myself unceremoniously
lowered to the ground. I was still in my fancy dress, so when I rolled onto my
back, the skirt billowed up and obscured everything in front of me. I
desperately pushed down the skirt and found myself looking up at my captor.

Caleb.

A
cold sweat broke out over my skin.
Now he
has me all to himself in these deserted woods
. I tried to scramble
away,
but the dress caught on brush and weighed
me down.

Caleb
was standing only a few feet away. I had seen murder in his eyes so often when
he looked at me. And now…here was his chance. Gathering the dress, I scooted
away.

“Colina…
It’s
me,” Caleb said.

As
I locked eyes with him, something made me pause in my escape efforts. There was
something familiar about the way he stood, the look in his eyes, his voice…

I
felt myself go numb all
over
.
For one moment my heart leapt
with the idea that he could still be alive.

But
then my heart sank again. It couldn’t be Luke. I shook my head. It couldn’t be.
Luke’s spirit was gobbled up by the hellhound.
This is a trick, cooked up by Caleb to torture me
.

“This
is a trick. You’re Caleb. Luke is…dead,” I whispered. I knew he could see my
fear
—I didn’t try to hide it.

“Colina,
I’m alive,” he said quietly. He reached for me. “Come to me. Let me hold you.”
His hand stopped in midair as I scurried backward.
“How can I prove it to you?” There was a desperate look in his eyes. “Remember
when you told me your family
was killed?
We
were alone. You had a glass of water in your hand, and it was raining outside.”
He moved slowly toward me. “The old gypsy woman gave me some vile-smelling
ointment, remember? I was supposed to put it on the stab wound I got protecting
that lady from the Triads.” His hand went to his side. “I never did use it.”

Everything he said was true.
They were all things only Luke would know.

Did
he come back from hell? And now he’s inside Caleb?
I pressed the heels of my palms into my eyes, trying to clear my thoughts. When
I looked back at him
there
was a familiar expression on his face—one that I had seen Luke make many
times. Luke was staring at me from inside another body. It
was
true. He’d somehow transferred into Caleb’s body.
All my prayers had been
answered. I felt like shouting out with joy, like dancing around the room. I
was so filled with happiness. I was bursting with excitment. Luke had come back
from hell. We would be together again. I wanted to throw myself into his arms,
but when I looked at him, I saw Caleb, and fear and uncertainity flooded
through me.

“It’s
me—
it’s Luke,” he said, taking a
hesitant step forward.

He
held out his hand, but I didn’t move. I felt frozen in place with a mixture of
happiness and horror. I closed my eyes and buried my face in my hands, fighting
back confused tears.

I felt his body settle next to mine. “Colina.”
A hand gently touched my hair. “Please.”

I should have
been
filed
with joy…and in a way I was, but even as I tried to force myself
to turn into his arms, I knew that I could not. A rush of fear ran through me
at the thought of Caleb touching me.

Luke’s voice surrounded me, and for a moment
the desire to be near him again rushed over me with such force that it took my
breath away.

His fingers brushed across my cheek. “I’ve
missed you,” he whispered in my ear.

I opened my eyes and found myself inches from
Caleb’s face. Caleb—my sworn enemy. A man who had hurt me every chance he
had.

Panic filled me and I shoved him back. I clambered
away, only stopping when my back hit the base of a tree. I couldn’t move any farther
and froze, my body shaking, my knees pulled up to my chest. I wanted to jump
into his arms—the arms of the man I loved, who would have done anything
to protect me. And at the same time I wanted to keep running—to flee from
the hand that had burned and tortured me, the man who had taken joy in my pain.

I watched as frustration filled Caleb’s eyes
and settled over his body.

It’s
not Caleb,
I reminded myself.
It’s Luke.

But even as my mind tried to reel with the
possibility that Luke had somehow come back, my body was still reacting in
fear. I’d been scared for so long that Caleb would hurt me. He already had once.
I had the scars of his hatred forever burned into my leg.

“You
don’t want me to touch you… It’s because of
him
,
isn’t it?” Caleb muttered through clenched teeth.

Him?
Who was he talking
about
? Caleb? Did he understand my fear?

“You
have
feelings
for him.” He towered
over me, an intimidating
intensity
in his
eyes. “I
saw
the way you let him put
his hands all over you.”

Is he talking about Dean?
I recalled Caleb’s look of
jealousy as I’d sought comfort in Dean’s arms. How long had Luke been possessing
Caleb? Had it actually been Luke watching me when I went with Dean? It wasn’t
fair for him to hold that against me. I’d been inconsolable—
I’d thought I’d lost him forever. For a brief, insane
moment, I’d just wanted to escape the sadness, the darkness, the emptiness that
filled my heart when I thought he was gone.

An
even more disturbing thought entered my mind
.
Or is he talking about Gage?
Would he understand that Gage had taken
control of my emotions and mind? I’d been helpless as Gage forced me into the
role of his fiancée—no, his
wife
.
That word stopped my protest before it reached my lips.
I’m Gage’s wife.
We completed the dark wedding ceremony.

Caleb—no,
Luke
—reached out, grabbed my
arm, and pulled me roughly to my feet. His expression was hard, cold, and angry.
It was an expression I’d never seen on Luke’s face before, but it was one that
I often saw Caleb wear when he looked at me.

“You’re
hurting me,” I hissed, trying to pull myself out of his grasp. The old mage,
Walter, who had taught me the spell to transfer Luke’s spirit into Dean, said that
if Luke transferred bodies more than once, there was a chance he could come
back wrong. Sometimes the spirit would change and morph into something…not
quite right.

His
fingers tightened. “I thought you loved me, but you care for him. I saw you
kissing him
…
being
with him.
Did you make love to him?”

Had
he been spying on me? I turned my face away, ashamed. I didn’t know which one of
them he was talking about, but I no longer cared. I just wanted to get away.

“I
never stopped loving Luke—you,” I whispered.

“I
don’t believe you,” he hissed.
His eyes blazed
with so much anger.
I twisted out of his grasp and he made another grab for
me
. When his fingers touched my wrist this
time, I screamed out in pain.

“You’re
burning me!”

I
fell back, uncontrollable tears streaming down my face, my wrist still feeling
like it was pressed against hot coals. I looked at his hands. They were on fire.
Reddish-orange flames slid along his fingers and down his arms. He was creating
hellfire. He looked at me, hatred still in his eyes. He looked as though he
wanted
to hurt me.

“Luke…don’t
do this,” I pleaded, cradling my burned arm.

He
was standing over me, looking like he wanted to kill me. I knew something was
off.
This wasn’t
Luke’s nature.

Luke
had always been in control of his anger. When the darkness had run through his
blood during the death dealer trials, he’d fought against it. He’d kept control.
He didn’t let anger overtake his emotions. He’d found a way of balancing
himself. It was something I’d been desperately trying to do myself since the death
dealer rituals.

But
that balance was something he’d possessed before, when he was completely himself—the
Luke I met at the magic shop. The Luke I fell in
love with
.

When
he possessed Dean’s body, there was very little darkness to
contend with
. Dean never finished the death
dealer trials.

Caleb,
on the other hand, was sadistic. He’d taken such pleasure in hurting me. And
inside Caleb was hellfire. Was it Caleb’s uncontrolled darkness now swirling
inside Luke, influencing him? Or was it something else? Had he come back wrong?

I
wanted to believe with all my heart that the Luke I loved was now standing before
me. That he had not come back damaged. That the body he was in was not such a
dark influence that it had changed him. Or that a piece of the darkness from
the other side hadn’t come back with him. “Luke…I love you,” I said softly.

Luke
looked down at me, turned, and with so much force I flinched, slammed his fist into
a tree. Then he stalked away.

I
gave him ten minutes to cool off and then went after him. I found him twenty
feet away, sitting up against a fallen log. The skirt of my dress kept tangling
in the underbrush as I made my way over to him. The ridiculous ball gown was obviously
not
made
for hiking through the forest
.
I tugged on the skirt, but the brambles
it had caught on wouldn’t release their hold
. With a huff of frustration, I pushed and pulled my way out
of the contraption. Feeling self-conscious in only a silk slip that fell just
below my knees, I wrapped my arms around myself and walked over to Luke.

I
demanded, “Let me see your hand.”

He
wouldn’t look at me. “Don’t come near me. I can’t
be trusted
.” I sat down next to
him
and grabbed at his hand, but he pulled away. “Colina, I’m serious. There’s so
much anger racing through me. I can barely breathe. When I thought of you in
someone else’s arms…” He looked off into the distance and said in a quiet voice,
“I couldn’t control the jealousy that raged through me. I hurt you. I could’ve
killed you.”

I
reached for his hand again. “But you didn’t.”

He
let me examine it without protest this time. His knuckles were bloodied, his
fingers
swollen
. I held his hand and then
dropped it abruptly when he turned to look at me.

Caleb’s
eyes met mine.

I
steeled myself, looked into his eyes, and tried to remind myself that inside
this body was the guy I fell in
love with
.

Whenever
Luke had taken over Dean, Dean’s blue eyes had changed to gray, the color
Luke’s eyes had been when he’d been alive. That’s the only way I could tell who
was in control. But, surprisingly, that wasn’t happening now. Caleb’s eyes were
brown. The eyes I stared into now weren’t exactly brown, but they definitely weren’t
Luke’s gray eyes, either. Somehow they were both colors at once. A ring of
gray
spread out from the pupil and a circle of
brown rimmed the irises edges.

What does that mean?
I wondered.

Luke
interrupted my thoughts by saying, “I thought you were dead. I didn’t know you
were still alive until I saw you in the square.” His free hand reached out, and
before I could move
away,
he touched my
face gently. “She knew that if she told me you were alive, I wouldn’t have
stopped until I found you. And if Gage knew I was inside of Caleb, we would
have lost our advantage. She’s a cagey old thing. She planned all of this. She helped
bring me back.”

Had
Mildred orchestrated this all? I’d been steadfastly distrusting her, but she
had only helped us since we arrived at the mining town.

I
watched as Luke pulled a velvet pouch from his pocket. He unwrapped the leather
rope around the top and let the contents fall into the palm of his hand. A pile
of
runes
laid there. “
She
told me to carry these with me,” he explained, carefully pouring the
runes
back into the bag and
tucking it back into his pocket.
“
The hellhound ripped the soul
from Caleb’s body.
The exact moment his soul left, my soul entered. She
transferred my spirit from Dean to Caleb. I don’t know how the old woman did it—the
timing of such a spell, the power it would take…” He looked off into the trees.

It
was all making sense now. During the transfer ritual, I recalled seeing
runic symbols
in the fog. At the time, I hadn’t
given it much thought, but now I knew it had been Mildred performing a spell. “She
planned
the hellhound attack?”