Death

I look down. “It was a regular day, Aleks.”

“Lorri will tell me if it was or wasn't.” His tone is edgy.

“You're not my dad.”

“No, I'm your partner.”

“I was pissed you were checking out that trashy blonde.”

“That's a pretty big tub. I need to get one of those installed at my place.”

I smirk. “Not big enough for you and me.

“You can sit on my lap.”

I hear his clothes drop to the floor. My face flushes as his feet cross the huge bathroom to the large two-person tub.

Chapter Six

Ophelia

“There are hookers everywhere. I don’t even know where else to put them.” Trist shouts overtop of the shouting women all speaking different languages.

“This one is from Monte Carlo. Her family has money. I'm going to flash her to the hospital there and wipe her mind,” Phillip shouts.

I stand there and watch it all.

“O, honey you need to help out.”

I glance at Lydia and shrug. “I don’t know what to do.”

Trist shakes his head and shouts at a Japanese girl who is sobbing and hugging herself. “Honey you can't sit there without underwear. That couch is an antique.”

I laugh and want to cry at the same time.

“Tristan, you ever feel like maybe we are too young for the shit we deal with?”

He rolls his eyes. “O, this is not the time to get melodramatic.”

I laugh again and turn away from the chaos.

I walk out the front door and out onto the street.

Instantly he is there. “You shouldn’t be out here.”

I shake my head. “I can't be in there. They found some house my father had in Rio. It was full of young teenage girls. I can't watch it.” My hands tremble.

He grabs me and pulls me into him. His warmth and mass surround me.

It's silent.

I look up to see greenery everywhere.

“Where are we?”

“Peru.”

The air is warm and wet, rich almost. Breathing it in makes me feel high.

“Where?”

“The Andes. There is a village down the hill where I once hid for five years.”

I look up into his beautiful face and smile. His blue eyes almost kill me. “Why?”

He kisses my lips softly. “To hide from your father.” His words are a warm breath against my lips.

He takes my hand and pulls me through the bright green forest. “He was crazed. His gifts were meant to pull the sickness from the blood. That’s how he was to use them. We were each given something as a gift from our father as we fell. Mine was used to pull sadness and misery from the soul. Emotional pain. When I went dark with your father, I grew to love the taste of them dying in my arms.” I pull back a bit, but his huge hand envelope mine and pull me along the hillside. I am afraid of him. I feel the natural magic inside of me brewing.

“I couldn’t stop myself anymore. I pulled and sucked until they died every time and I never gave it another thought. Your father is, well, charismatic. He had me believing that we were better than them. Dorian too. We had fun, a lot of fun. But then Dorian and I met a young man named Marcus. He was also a charismatic young man, sarcastic and funny though. Not snobbish like your father.”

He pulls me to a huge tree. It's the most incredible thing I have ever seen. He covers my eyes with his hands and I feel the air move. When he takes them from my eyes we are high above the ground. My heart beats widely. I grip the rough bark of the tree. I can see for hundreds of miles. The mist is settled in amongst the mountains and hills.

“Wow.”

“I know.” He points to the village. “Marcus was smarter than the other humans we had been around. He caught on to what we all were very quickly. He wanted the immortality and the power. He helped Jonathan convince Ethan, Henry's brother, that the dark magic was the only way to punish the man responsible for his daughter's death. Once Ethan turned dark he made many mistakes. One was teaching Marcus and Jonathan how to enslave his own brother. Marcus wanted the magic of the Fae, he wanted the immortality. Jonathan offered him his blood and swore he would make him the highest of the vampires. Marcus didn’t want to be below Jonathan. Instead he went after Henry. Dorian was tired of the evil ways of Jonathan and went back with Lorri. Marcus used the guilt Dorian had over his dark deeds, to convince him going after Henry's magic was the only way to kill Jonathan. That was how we met Aleks. Well after he died, we met him. Marcus told Aleks that taking Henry's heart was the only way to get the power to kill Jon, Aleks's father. Henry, thinking he was much older and considerably smarter than them, caught them in the act and cursed Marcus. He didn’t realize what he had given him, was the very thing he wanted. Realizing a mortal had tricked him, Henry was livid. He found his brother and murdered him, taking his magic.”

I shake my head. “That’s sick. Marcus is a bigger shit than I imagined.”

Oliver smirks. “He is incredibly smart and wicked. His brain is ridiculous. He is a doctor, a chemist, a botanist, a pharmacist, a lawyer, my god I can't even imagine them all. I know he's written novels under assumed names. It's frightening really. Anyway, we all had more respect for Marcus then. Jonathan wanted him dead. Somehow he convinced Dorian and Aleks that Henry's loyalty was of great importance. Henry was on a rampage and ready to kill them all and Jonathan wanted them dead. So they used the things they had learned from Ethan and stole Henry's heart. His heart is inside of Marcus, as we all know. Henry doesn’t know it, thanks to Ari.”

“We should free him.”

“No. He is volatile. He is dangerous. It's best if we let Marcus keep him under wraps. The children of your mother, the ones born of the Fae, they're not stable.”

I sigh. “I don’t feel stable either.”

He kisses my head. “You aren’t.”

“Why did you hide in the village?”

“Your father knew I helped them. I helped Marcus and Aleks and Dorian. I too had turned to Lorri. The saying 'Hell hath no fury' actually came into existence because of Lorri and your dad. She loved him, a long time ago. When we fell he went for Lillith, seeing opportunity and power.”

“He left her for my mom, even though my mom didn’t want him?”

He nods. “Yup. Lorri loved him for a long time. She kept making excuses for him and expecting him to come back to her. He was her weakness. When he didn’t she started the hunt for him. Unfortunately, by the time she had gotten around to him he had built a very large army for himself. Most of the archangels that have fallen and all the nephilim but a few, agree with him. This is our playground. Here we have freewill and the ability to choose. We are immortal. The gates of heaven will never open for us anyway. We have fallen.”

“We will kill him together.” I squeeze his hand.

He squeezes back. “I want you to do a spell for me though. Just in case. This is going to be our meeting place. You can make a port here. This tree is magical. It's spelled by the village shaman.”

I frown. “Why?”

His eyes sparkle. “In case you need to run.”

I look out over the view and nod. “What do I do?”

“Close your eyes and hold the tree tightly. Call the tree and mother earth and the power and light of the spirits. Mark the tree as yours. Visualize a door shaped in the air that you can walk through from anywhere. The rest will come to you.”

I swallow hard and close my eyes. The earth magic fills me instantly. Like mother earth and I are connected. My body hums. The rough bark heats in my hands until it is the same temperature as my hands.

I focus on the doorway. Flashes of the shaman blessing the tree fill my mind. His skin is old and dark and wrinkled. He speaks something I don’t understand. His eyes are completely white and his dark skin is sweaty. He rocks and chants and smoke is coming from somewhere.

His white eyes dart at me. He smiles and puts a hand out for me. I feel myself letting go of the bark and reaching for him.

My sisters stand in front of him, blocking my view of his face.

The blue sisters shake their heads. I push past them and find him again.

“O, don't do this. This is dark magic.” Their voices float in the air but I swat at them and sit beside the man. He crosses his skinny brown legs. I cross mine too. He closes his eyes and takes my hand. His skin burns mine. I scream out but I can't take my hand from his grip.

I can smell my skin burning. He pries open my hand and rubs it into the ground. My eyes fly open. My lips are parted but no sound escapes them. The sun has set. It’s dark. I'm standing in the tree still. My hand is still gripping the branch. I pull it back but the burnt skin from my palm sticks to the branch. I cry out and stop pulling away. My hand shakes.

“It's okay, O. Just pull it back slowly and then heal it.” Oliver is still with me.

“Did you leave?”

He shakes his head. “You did.”

I peel my hand from the branch. Tears stream down my cheeks. When I finally have it off I turn my hand over. A circle with a line through it is burned into my palm. The skin is red and blistered. I place my other hand over it and pull the healing from the tree we are in. The hand heals instantly but the scar is the circle with the line through it. The pain is still mildly present.

“It still hurts.”

He nods. “It will for a while. You've left a piece of yourself here. It's the only way to make a port. It's so that you can find this place again. Your piece of you will pull you here.” He takes my hand and kisses the palm. The air moves and we are on the road out front of Lydia's.

I don’t want to leave him but I know I must. Ari is standing on the front steps. She needs me.

“See you later.” He squeezes my hand again. He lets me go and steps back and then he's gone.

I miss him already. I feel bleak and weird about the things he's told me.

I glance at Ari and try to smile. Trist comes bursting through the door. “O, it's like Pretty Woman meets a Miss Universe pageant in there. Phillip has taken ten of them home but there are still like twelve girls we don’t know where to take. They come from poor countries. It's chaos. Giselle is up and about too. She already almost ate a nice girl from Africa.”