“Amun finished digging through Burden’s secrets. The high lord you’re looking for, the one who claimed Annabelle, is named Unforgiveness.”
Unforgiveness. The name echoed through his mind. Finally, an answer and yet, relief was not forthcoming. “I have never fought him.” Had heard of him, yes. Who hadn’t? The baddest of the bad, the worst of the worst. Zacharel had hunted him the few times he’d heard the demon had been summoned by a human, but always Unforgiveness managed to hide before his arrival.
“Thank you,” he said to Lucien, already relaying the information to Thane.
We managed to capture three more minions, Thane said inside his mind. We’ll find out what they know about this Unforgiveness.
Lucien inclined his head in acknowledgment. “You’re welcome. And now I hope we’re even and never have to work together again.” With that, the warrior disappeared.
Zacharel bundled Annabelle in the blanket from the bed and lifted her into his arms. More than not wanting to draw the demons to Bianka’s cloud, he did not want Annabelle waking up and lashing out at anyone but him.
Oh, Annabelle. Will you ever be able to forgive me, when I’m not sure I can forgive myself?
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
ANNABELLE AWOKE WITH A JOLT, jerking upright. She was panting, sweat running down her chest and back in rivulets. The most terrible dream had plagued her. She had become a demon, had raced through a forest and had fought Zacharel.
Zacharel.
With his name came a burst of dread she couldn’t explain, but knew she was supposed to tamp down. Dangerous, she thought.
What was? The emotion? Or Zacharel?
Her gaze darted around. She was in another hotel room, alone. I should run. I have to run. She didn’t question the thought, just threw her legs over the side of the bed. Before she could unfold to a stand, Zacharel appeared in front of her, his expression unreadable.
The dread spiked.
Stay calm. You have to stay calm. Confused, unsure, she froze. “What are you doing?” she asked.
With a pained moan he dropped to his knees, and suddenly she could read his expression. Agonized, ashamed, regretful, horrified… Just then he was a broken man, the pieces scattered in too many directions to ever find and glue back together.
“I…I… Zacharel?”
“I’m sorry, Annabelle. So sorry.”
In the next instant, the truth hit her with the force of a baseball bat. What she remembered wasn’t a dream. She had turned into a demon. She had raced through the forest. She had fought Zacharel.
Eyes wide, she held out her arms, but a robe blocked her view of herself. She only dared to breathe again when she rolled back the sleeves and saw the light brown of her skin.
Winding her arms around her back proved more difficult, but she had to know, had to—no wings! Thank the Lord! Her back was smooth where it should be smooth and ridged where it should be ridged.
Zacharel watched her without uttering a word. Still on his knees, humbled before her.
Her arms fell heavily to her sides. “You hit me,” she stated flatly. Gone was the dread, but in its place was a bone-deep disappointment.
His head bowed, his chin hitting his sternum. “I know.”
“And you didn’t know who I was.”
“No. I did not.”
He wasn’t even trying to defend himself. He could have told her that type of change in a human was unheard of, something he’d thought impossible. He could have reminded her of her reaction to him, when he had morphed into a demon.
“Why did I transform? How did you turn me back to normal?”
Not once did he glance up. “Tell me what happened in the cloud first. Then I will tell you everything I know, or even suspect. I will hide no detail from you.”
“Very well.”
He listened as she spoke, and every so often, he nodded. By the end, his shoulders were slumped as if a heavy weight rested atop them.#p#分页标题#e#
“Clouds can do many things,” Zacharel said, “but they cannot change a human into a demon. The demon lied about that part. Nor would a minion have had the power to do such a thing.”
“But then how could I have changed if it wasn’t the cloud or the demon?” Dread shot through her, soon chilling every part of her. “Does that mean I’m no longer a human, and my outside was just catching up with my insides?”
“Possibly. I think, when you were marked, more was done to you than either of us realized. I think the demon replaced a piece of your spirit.”
No, surely not. She would have known. Right? “How is that possible?”
“He would have reached inside your body with a spiritual hand, and, like a blade can remove a limb, taken what he wanted. Probably just a small portion, no bigger than a dime. He would then have replaced that piece with one of his own, exchanging the two, bonding you far more than a married couple…melding you.”
White-hot fury exploded through her, completely overshadowing the dread, and she found herself beating at Zacharel’s shoulders. “For the last time, I’m not married to the demon who murdered my parents! I’m not! And I’m not melded, either!”
He never lifted a hand in defense. “If that was indeed done to you, your life is linked to his. As long as he lives, you live. As long as you live, he lives. I had not considered that possibility before, but it is clear to me now.”
Questions rained through her mind, her actions slowing…stopping. “But…but… Why send other demons after me? If I died, he would have died.”
“Remember when Thane mentioned something blocked him and others from taking you physically? I believe that same something prevented them from rendering a killing blow, as well.”
“But I…I just can’t be melded to him.” And of course, the burn in her chest fired up as it always did when her…negative emotions…got the better of her.
That’s right! The burn had played a part in the change, and her emotions had played a part in the burn.
She told Zacharel, and he nodded, saying, “That makes sense. The only question now is why the demon did it. Without your knowing consent, and the dream would not have provided that consent, he violated one of the highest heavenly laws. Free will.”
Her heart skipped a tortured beat. Something in his tone… “And you’re an enforcer of those laws, right?” That’s what he’d told her during their first meeting, she was sure. And that could only mean…
“No,” she thought she screamed, but the word emerged as a whisper. “No.”
“Yes,” he confirmed.
“So you will be the one to carry out his sentence?”
A nod this time, rather than a verbal response.
Another heartbeat was missed because she suspected the answer. “And that sentence is?”
There was a long, tense pause. He looked up, he looked down, then left and right, as if he wanted to be anywhere else. Finally, she heard, “Death.”
Every fiber of her being rebelled at the thought of her own. By upholding the law, Zacharel would be killing the demon, yes—but he would also be killing Annabelle. “How would this…merging—” she gagged “—cause me to change into a demon four years after the fact?”
“I’ve seen the way the Lords of the Underworld come to physically resemble their demons when their own negative emotions overtake them. It’s just as you described. They lose control of their humanity, all reasoning abolished. The demon inside the cloud knew what had happened to you all those years ago, so he knew how to elicit the response he wanted.”
“I agree, I do. I mean, the emotion thing was my idea. But I don’t understand how four horror-filled years could have passed without a single change, and then all of a sudden, boom.”
“You are forgetting that you were drugged for all of those four years, and those drugs were meant to suppress the depths of your emotions. Even when you began to feel things strongly again, the drugs were likely lingering in your system and diluting the full extent of your feelings.”
“But I’ve been over the withdrawals for a while,” she said, clinging to a hope that they were wrong.
“You’ve also been injured or recovering. Weakened.”
Yes, there was that. “But what about the Water of Life?”
“It healed the human part of you, but aggravated the demon part, and it, too, would have slowed your transformation.”#p#分页标题#e#
And she’d certainly been aggravated the two times he’d fed her the stuff, hadn’t she.
Hope withered. Her chin quivered, and her eyes welled with tears she refused to shed. She was part demon. The truth whispered through her. She was part demon. It was a scream of outrage and helplessness this time.
Calm, you have to calm. “Will I change again?” she croaked, though she already knew the answer. Could already feel the burn sprouting in her chest.
“With extreme negative emotion…yes, I think you will.”
“Can the demon piece be removed from me? Replaced with something else?” Another spark of hope formed…
“No. Too much time has passed.”
…and was destroyed.
I won’t cry. I won’t.
“The demon you carried through the forest, he had absorbed my brother’s essentia. There was a piece of me in there, too. But I did not die when the demon died because nothing had taken root. And I was able to remove everything from the body without any resistance because that essentia recognized me. What’s in you has taken root and would resist. It would not recognize me, nor want any part of me.”