Torn (Demon Kissed #3) (15 page)

Eyebrow arched, I gazed at her insane expression. “Al, there’s no time for this. He won’t forgive me.” I lowered my head onto my knees, fighting back tears that wanted to stream down my face.

Al was quite for a moment, and then patted my knee. “I didn’t tell him anything.” My head shot up, surprised. “It ain’t my place. I told him you effonated back from wherever you were and that you were in bad shape. I told him to come around in a little bit, knowing you need to rest some.” A soft smile spread across my lips. Collin wouldn’t be irate when I saw him. I wouldn’t have to beg him to listen to me, so I could tell him what happened. He didn’t know.

Al continued, “You’re like a daughter to me, Ivy. I’d do anything to help you.
What’s
mine is yours and all that. I think you already know that.” She smiled at me. “The last time I had someone like that was Eric. He was my boy. I trained him and raised him right. He was one of the best Martis I’d ever seen. I was proud of him, Ivy—so proud. And I can’t say he done wrong with what he did. If you didn’t save him in the courtroom, I would have. Injustice is not tolerable.” She folded her arms and shook her head, looking away from me. After taking a deep breath, she looked back up. “I knew that would be the last time I saw him. No matter where you took him, he couldn’t come back. And I thought that’d be the last I saw of you as well. But here you are. Right in front of me again.” She smiled sadly.

I didn’t realize that Al didn’t favor every Martis she took under her wing. It seemed like she was just as sweet to Shannon and the others, but maybe that wasn’t it. Maybe she was accessible to all of them, but somehow Eric and I had claimed special places in her life. She looked at me like I was a child—her child. Thinking back, she did the same thing to Eric when he first introduced me to her. She beamed with pride and blatantly said he was her favorite. I thought she was a spooky old nun, but Eric knew better. He knew how amazing she was. Al patched him up after the Valefar killed Lydia, the girl he was going to spend the rest of his life with. No doubt Al sat with him and warned him of God-knows-what, while he was trying to recover from that nightmare. She transformed him into someone good and bled most of the hate from his heart. Eric had very little left by the time I’d met him, and I understood why he had it.

Some anger is difficult to release. Once, Eric told me that we were alike, and that must have been why the old nun put us together. In some ways we were. We lost more than we could bear, and we kept things buried too deep inside. I watched Al’s face as I was thinking these things.

A question crossed my mind, one that I hadn’t had the guts to ask before now, “Why don’t you blame me for Eric’s…” I closed my eyes not wanting to say it. When I opened them again, I looked into her aged face and asked, “How could you still talk to me after what I did to him? How could you sit here and act like everything is fine? I’m a monster. I did the unthinkable.” Before that night I had no idea how much Eric meant to her. He was her child and I killed him.

She smiled sadly at me, “How could I not? How could I cut you off for being who you are, and doing what you thought was right?”

“I killed him. No, I did worse than that,” tears were streaking my cheeks as I spoke. Al’s gray eyes met mine but held no judgment. I couldn’t understand why. “It was the very worst thing I could have done to him.”

She shook her head. “No, that was done a long time ago. And you know it. Stop this. You are what you are, Ivy. You did what you thought was right, did you not?” I nodded at her. “Then stop this. Accept that you made a mistake, and it cost Eric his life. Things like that happen to the best Martis, so it’s expected to happen to you—even more so. You’ll have to make decisions faster and harder. Sometimes things will work out. Sometimes the price of the mistake will seem to be more than you can bear,” I hung my head, feeling like I was drowning in guilt, but she flicked my chin with her finger and I looked up at her.

She continued, “One mistake doesn’t define a person—it takes a lifetime of actions to do that. You will not sit here and wallow in guilt over this anymore.
Push past it.
There are bigger things to deal with, and you need your wits about you. We need to get the poison from your chest before something happens. For us to do that, you need to let go of guilt you feel about Eric. You don’t have the luxury of time, Ivy. Grieve for him later. I’m not telling you to forget him, or forget your mistake. We just don’t have the time to process all of it now. ”

I felt sheepish for a second and nodded, swallowing the lump in my throat. “Does this kill me, Al? I know you’ve seen it. I know you’ve seen how all of this ends…” My words hung in the air as she tilted her head, studying my face.

“No,” she replied, “you overcome this. The poison does not kill you. But it doesn’t end the way you think.” She shook her head, looking away from me.

“Then tell me what you saw, so we can fix this,” I said. I added, “And I know it couldn’t have been giving Collin a demon kiss. I’d never do it. So what else is there, Al? Tell me what you saw in your vision?”

The old nun sat down and looked over at me. She seemed distraught. With her fingers laced together tightly, she said, “You find Satan’s Stone. I saw it. That cursed rock does exist, even though most of us thought it was only a fable.”

Skepticism washed over me as I arched my eyebrow at her. “I find a magic rock that belonged to Satan?” A smile pulled at the corners of my mouth. I tried not to laugh. I wanted to believe her, but it sounded impossible.

Al shook her head, “Believe me; I know what it sounds like. If visions didn’t reveal the truth, I wouldn’t have believed it either. The legend of Satan’s Stone is a story that’s so old that no one remembers it anymore. Some called it the Devil’s Rock, while others called it Satan’s Stone—either way, it’s the same thing. And its power is real.
Very real.
You find it… And you’re healed.

“The last time that rock was seen was during one of the early battles in the Angel Demon Wars. No one won that first battle. It was documented that the fighting just stopped when a young warrior held a stone up in the air. By now you know Martis document everything. The library at Rome is extensive, so I went looking for the document and found it. The section of text concerning the stone is marked as a translational error.”

“And…” I promoted, wanting to know more.

Al hesitated. Her eyes were wide, but she quickly blinked her emotions away. Watching her closely, I noticed she hid the fear in her eyes as quickly as she could, but I’d already seen it. Whatever Satan’s Stone was, it scared her. “And if it is a translation error, we can see for ourselves, because I know someone who has seen the original document—someone that you and I used to know as well; someone intelligent, cunning, and very resourceful; someone who left you half naked after he tried to give you a demon kiss.”

“Damn it! Eric! Eric is the person I need to help me?” I couldn’t believe it. I ran my fingers through my hair resisting the frantic urge to rip it all out. “He saw the war letters and knows about the Satan Stone?”

She nodded at me, “He never mentioned Satan’s Stone to me, but I knew he must have seen that passage in the original letter. He came across it while he was hunting you over the years. He mentioned finding the original translation. He was excited about it at the time. He always got a kick out of stuff like that.”

Springing out of bed, I grabbed a pair of jeans, asking Al questions as I got dressed, “So if Eric isn’t Eric anymore, I’m screwed right? Or do you think if I went to his old apartment, the papers will still be there?” I paused, and looked up at her as I pulled on a boot. There was a surprised expression on her face, so I added, “He had a book, you know—a book with tons of writing in it, and pictures of stuff. He threw it in my face when he found out I had Valefar blood, and made me look at the pages. He said it was years and years of work
..”
Eager to know more about it, I sat next to her and asked, “Do you think he still has the letter? Do you think it’s in that book?”

She nodded.
“Maybe.
He wrote that book over his life. In the early days, I’d see him scratching notes in it when he stayed with me. I haven’t since it since. I didn’t realize that he still kept it, but that would make sense. He’d keep record of things so he didn’t forget over the years. If that’s the same book, there’d be notes in it about everything and anything. Better go get it before someone else does. Do you know where it is?”

Pausing, I shook my head. “The last time I saw it was the night that Jake came through his window. Shannon snatched the book when we ran. There were Valefar everywhere. After that, we were separated and I didn’t see what happened to the book. Do you think it’s possible that it’s still in his apartment?”

Al looked uncertain, “It’s possible. Eric would want it hidden if it contained information like that. After the attack, I didn’t think he went back, but I didn’t see the book either. He didn’t have it with him the night you two closed the portal at the old church and forced the demons back into the Underworld. After that, Julia banished him and I didn’t see him around these parts again. There’s a slim chance he hid the book in the same spot, until he could return and take it, but Ivy…” she shook her head at me, “the odds of it being there are slim. The Martis leaked to the landlord that Eric was killed in a horrific accident. All of his things were destroyed. The only way that book is still there is if Julia didn’t take it, and it was well hidden.”

Ice dripped down my spine. I turned to Al, “Would she take it?
Really?”
Before Al nodded, I knew that Julia would take the book. Of course she would. The Martis covered their tracks and would have removed any proof of his existence. They thought he was a traitor. I wondered if they had any idea what their actions resulted in. If they didn’t condemn him to die, he wouldn’t have followed me into the Underworld and become one of the most evil Valefar I’d ever seen.

But I couldn’t think about that now. It’d have to wait until later, when this was over. After lacing up my other boot, I grabbed a sweater and yanked it over my head, and said to Al, “Then I need to hurry and hope to God it’s not already gone. Here’s to hoping Eric paid rent several months in advance.” I kissed Al on the cheek and ducked out and into the night.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Collin was waiting for me outside the church, but when he came running up to me we didn’t hug like a normal couple. When I ran out the doors and into the night, I saw him standing in the shadows. My stomach twisted. There were so many things to tell him. We ran toward each other and stopped, toe to toe. He seemed unsure of something, although I couldn’t tell exactly what was bothering him without touching him. The expression on his face was torn between anger and guilt.

I brushed his hand gently with mine and said, “He ambushed us. It wasn’t your fault.”

“I should have stayed with you. It was my fault. When I realized a Valefar took you, it was too late. Tell me who it was. Who did this to you?” There was fury in his eyes. He’d realized that it wasn’t just any Valefar who tricked him—it was someone very intelligent with skills that equaled his own. Al’s silence hadn’t bought me much time, but it did buy me enough that I knew what I had to do.

Swallowing hard, I looked up into his face. I couldn’t keep lying to him. And if Eric was trying to make a grab for me, and Collin happened to see him, I didn’t want Collin to be caught off guard. Plus, he’d know that I lied and it would tip him off that something was wrong. “It was Eric. He’s a Valefar…”

“But how is that possible?” he asked shaking his head. “You said he died. Ivy, I didn’t want to press you about it before, but you need to tell me what happened. This is bad. Eric was a powerful Martis. He was very skilled. He’ll be a difficult adversary if he wants to attack you.” His lips remained parted and he blinked at me as he tilted his head, “Why does he remember you?”

This was the part I was dreading. I felt the words on my lips. I was about to tell him that I did it—that Eric remembers me because I was the one who gave him the demon kiss. Courage fled at the sight of his blue eyes. I couldn’t think about anything but losing him, about never hearing his voice or feeling his touch again.