The Second Sign (27 page)

She couldn’t lose it now, not when Jake needed her.
She found strength in the feelings that welled up inside of her.
“Let them go.” She took a step forward, ready to leap.

Realizing the threat, Alexi stopped and took a step
back. “Oh, I think not,” Alexi said, meeting her bluff.

Gabby couldn’t fight all of them, and she needed to
have the advantage before she acted.

“We will release only
one
,” Kyle said, his
eyes like daggers. “
One
. And you get to choose. But choose
well, my darling.”

“How could you do this?” She fought the urge to fold
in on herself, to center herself and allow the earth to swallow
her.

“Marty, Heather, Sarah, this...” He swept his hands
behind him indicating Jake and Jenna. “It’s all meant for you. You
were warned. This is your fault, really. So you can see that you
really have but one choice.”

“Don’t do this.”

“Gabby,” Jake croaked, his voice ragged and pained.
“Save Jenna! Don’t you dare save me. I’m already dead. Save
her!”

Alexi let out a shriek. “Oh, how nice. Save the
sister and let your boyfriend die a horrible death. Do you know
what happens to the body when it’s stretched beyond endurance?”
Alexi picked up the rope, slid her hand along it, and tugged at
Jenna’s binds.

Jenna sobbed loudly. Blood seeped from her torn
lip.

But Jenna’s human soul would get rebooted once she
dies, while Jake, as a demon, would live a second life...in
Hell.

Gabby couldn’t allow that for Jake. He didn’t know
what waited for him...for both of them.

“Jake.” Jenna gave a hiccup. “Jake, I love you,” she
cried.

“Jenna, don’t. You’re going to be fine. I’m not
going to let anything happen to you. I promised, remember?”

Jake broke from his sister’s gaze, and Gabby felt
her heart tumble. Her stomach tightened and every cell in her body
exploded with regret. Regret of every fight she ever had, every
busted lip she ever gave, every angry moment in her short life. She
regretted all of it, because in it, she knew that the anger had
strung her up so tight she missed all the goodness. She missed the
simple gesture of kindness, the potent power of love. She had to
trust in it.

She had to trust in love.

“Well, Jake, it’s not up to you to make such
promises, is it?” Kyle’s eyes turned a deep red, his lips spread in
a snarl, and black shadows slithered against his flesh. A guttural
sound escaped him. “Now, Alexi,” he spat.

Jake shook his head, tears glistened in his
eyes.

Gabby looked away from him, noticed the blade set
between the two stones and a key. She charged. A blur of visceral
reaction spurred through her. The two demons beside the heavy stone
touched them and sent them over the cliff.

“No! Not me! Save her!” Jake roared.

Gabby couldn’t look at him as she slid the key into
his ankle chains and began cutting the thick rope tied to his
wrist, trying to avert her eyes from the length of rope uncoiling
over his head as the boulder made its descent. It would only be
seconds before the line would snap taut and he would die.

She gritted her teeth as she sliced at the last
tendril of rope that snapped him free. He pulled the knife from her
grasp and shoved her hard, dropping her to the ground and ran to
Jenna in a frantic spurt. He began cutting her rope as her sobs
grew louder mixed with his own. It cut Gabby like a dull blade.
Everyone in the clearing turned to static. Alexi, Kyle, and the
eight demons surrounding them did not exist those few moments Jake
tried to save his sister. Gabby could do nothing to save her as the
final loop of rope uncoiled.

The rope snapped taut and the forest echoed with a
pain-filled scream that cut through the night. Jenna’s body pulled
against the chains around her ankles as they dug into her flesh,
cutting them to the bone. With her senses heightened, Gabby heard
all the bones in Jenna's body break. Her hips, the ridges along her
spine, her shoulders, like a ripple, until her ankles snapped just
as her shoulders popped and her left arm tore clean off. Jake let
out a strangled cry, his face splattered with her blood.

Jenna’s screams diminished into a faint whisper, a
final gasp, and then silenced. Her eyes gazed at her brother as her
body convulsed. Her other arm, held together by a sinew of flesh,
gave way and skittered over the edge of the cliff. Jake wrapped her
in his arms, desperately trying to stop the blood that pooled
around them. His eyes locked on his sister until he stopped trying
to save her and held her close to him instead. His cries echoed in
the now silent clearing, digging into Gabby's soul.

She broke her gaze from Jake as the demons
approached her with grins splitting their faces. She recognized
five from the town. Their eyes glazed revealing a hint of the
demons inside them. Alexi, the only one who still had free will,
like Heather, had coalesced evil with her very soul.

And Kyle was something else entirely.

A snarling sound from Jake forced her to whip
around. Panic welled up inside her. Jake slowly turned to face her,
pure anger and sorrow in his dark eyes, soaked to the core in his
sister’s blood.

“Jake,” Gabby began, wanting to apologize for
everything, wanting to explain. But what could she say? The look in
his eyes told her everything she needed to know. He hated her for
not choosing to save his sister. He hated her.

He stepped closer to her, ripping off his shirt to
reveal his flesh underneath. Gabby gasped. A thick, black tattoo
writhed and coiled around his tan flesh, across his shoulders,
branching up his neck and around his torso. The demon’s
marking.

He growled low in his throat. His ephemeral energy
flowed from his being and seeped into her. Her eyes clouded and her
limbs grew weak. He would kill her and she’d let him. She wouldn’t
fight him. But instead, his gaze shifted to Alexi as he launched
himself at her, his claws outstretched, ready to tear her
apart.

A rush of air lifted him off his feet and sent him
pummeling to the ground. Kyle had met his charge and managed to
drop Jake where he lay face down, unmoving.

“Get off of him!” Gabby yelled, kicking him
hard.

Kyle pulled himself up and yanked her back, but not
before she saw Jake’s naked back. Tiny scales rimmed his spine
marked with runes and symbols. She shoved Kyle hard and dropped on
her knees beside Jake. She didn’t know where to touch him that
wasn’t tattooed. Her own tattoo throbbed weakly. Was she to be a
demon like him? Was she bound to him? But he hated her, could never
love her after she let his sister die. Max was right. They were
never meant to be. She lowered her head.

“Naite,” she whispered.

“Gabby...” Kyle began to say, his voice a whisper of
calm in the chaos.

She snapped her head up at him and his gaze led her
to the apparition approaching.

“There is hope, Gabby,” Naite’s voice echoed through
her.

Naite had played everyone to her advantage. Like
pawns. Gabby had been wrong. She couldn’t save Jake from his fate,
and she had sacrificed Jenna.

“You can choose to be with him. Together with our
kind we can have power. It is destined. It is your purpose.”

“Why?” Her voice cracked but she didn’t care. “Why
him? Why me?”

“He is your soul mate.”

Gabby gently touched the black scales on his back.
The tattoo curled away from her touch as if it feared her. Ready to
give everything to be with him, Gabby allowed the power to surge
through her. Jake had not deserved this. Gabby would give anything
to trade places with him. To save him. She wanted to tell him
everything. She’d meant to tell him everything after the phone
call, but it was too late.

Lowering herself so that her lips brushed his ear,
she whispered, “I love you.” She swallowed back a sob, but her
tears could not be subdued, and they fell along her cheek and onto
his in communion of what they were, what they would share, and who
they’d become.

Pain ripped through her spine and she clenched her
teeth to suppress her scream. She would join with the demon world,
her true nature revealed, but she would be with him. Love was truly
more powerful than war, than wants, than herself. She was free. She
groaned and felt her shirt tear at her back.

She was meant to be with him. He had shown her how
to love, and she would give up everything for him. She would
explain to him why she had to choose him and why Jenna had to die.
He would understand and forgive her, take her in his arms, hold
her, and she would give in to him completely.

Gabby stood up. Pain gripped her, like shards of
glass slicing through her flesh, up her spine. She tilted her head
up to the sky as a feral scream escaped her lips. Tears fell across
her cheeks, burning her flesh as they trailed their way down her
face. And then she opened her eyes to the night sky. A wave of cool
air enveloped her, and she opened her arms, arching her back and
stretched. A breeze blew around her, ruffling her hair.

“No!” Naite hissed. “This can’t be.”

Gabby looked over her shoulders to a pair of black
wings. Angel wings.

Just then the clearing erupted with images of
blurred shadows. Max broke into the clearing first, pounding Kyle
right in the chest and sending him clear off the cliff face. Mir,
Arden, and Zorn came in behind him already meeting the possessed
souls.

Naite reached for Alexi and in a flash of white
light they both disappeared. Gabby turned to Jake, but he was gone.
As a seraphim, Mir’s mere presence forced the demons to leave the
possessed, and the bodies fell to the ground in a heap. Gabby met
Mir’s shocked gaze for a moment, before she jumped off the cliff,
unfurled her wings, and soared into the night.

This Is Just The Beginning

Power surged through Jake, beginning at the base of
his spine and climbing up to the back of his neck and into his
brain. He could see clearly, hear everything, and smell...Gabby. He
lifted himself off the ground and dusted his pants. Pain throbbed
along his spine, but he would manage it. Pain of the flesh was
nothing compared to the pain that seeped into his very core.
Darkness still surrounded him, and the break of the moonlight
offered little reprieve from it. The smell of blood, Jenna’s blood,
struck him so severely he fell to his knees, digging his hand into
the coarse sand under him. Jenna’s scream echoed into his mind, and
the vision of her pain and her last dying breath as her eyes veiled
flashed behind his eyes. He could do nothing to save her. But Gabby
could have. Gabby could’ve saved her and let Jake die. He would’ve
welcomed death. But this, this was beyond the limits of his
control. Gabby betrayed him.

He opened his eyes and saw his father’s lake house.
With all the strength he could muster, he walked up the steps and
into the lit house. The bodies of Miller and the other two were
undisturbed. Light beamed out of the kitchen, and Jake slowly
walked toward it. He remembered Jenna asking to tag along on the
tour Gabby gave him just a few days ago. She had smiled more then,
had lifted his spirits, and gave him hope. Now, he felt nothing.
Jenna’s blood still saturated his flesh. It reeked against the
death around the house.

“Jake?”

His limbs heavy as if underwater, he turned. His
father’s sorrow-filled eyes dug into him and Jake could feel
nothing. His father’s eyes roamed his exposed flesh, eyeing the
markings that had consumed him. “Jenna?” his father asked.

Jenna
. Jake couldn’t bring himself to speak
her name. “Dead.” The finality of those words burned his mind. “Do
me a favor and do what you do best, run, hide in shadows, lie,”
Jake said, seeing for the first time the cowardice that overcame
his father. Coward of truth, of life, of love. He looked one last
time into the eyes of a man who he thought was bound by love, a man
who shunted his true form for the love of a human. And for what?
Jake turned his back on his father and didn’t look back. Phil Myers
died the moment his mother took her own life. Jake had no one.
Nothing.

A pulling led him to Pat’s lake house. There he
found Naite waiting for him, her beautiful face filled with pain
and sorrow.

“I’m sorry, Jake,” she said as he reached her. “I
wasn’t able to get to you in time.”

Images of his sister bleeding, dying, pained screams
filled his mind.

Because of Gabby.

She had lied to him. Had made him believe in her,
and allowed Jenna to die.

“Jake, I tried to get to you,” Naite whispered. “I
had no idea Kyle and Alexi were using you. I didn’t know they took
poor Jenna.”

A surge of power flowed through him, like a god.
Invincible. Immortal.

Alexi came down the steps, beside her someone he
recognized from the newspaper article. Kyle. The Kyle that had
saved Gabby, the one she visited. He grumbled low in his
throat.

“I hope everything’s cool,” Alexi said. “I did what
I was told. You promised to give him to me.” She lifted her chin to
Jake.

“She is yours,” Naite whispered into his ear and
with a flutter of wind she disappeared amongst the shadows.

Before Alexi realized the trouble she was in, Jake
came up behind her and, in one fluid motion, lifted her chin,
exposing the soft flesh of her throat, and sliced it with a blade
he hadn’t even noticed he clutched in his hand. Blood pooled around
his fingers. She gasped, clutched at her throat as if that would
save her life, and fell.

Before her body hit the ground, he charged at Kyle
who gave one quick glance over Jake’s shoulder to a presence there.
But Jake, already in motion, did not pause and drove the blade into
his chest, tearing flesh and splitting bone until it pierced his
heart. Kyle gave a sigh and fell with a loud thump.