Dead Man’s Deal. Jocelynn Drake

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ I twisted around to look at my mentor in confusion. “You had your chance to kill him with magic and you threw it away. You’ll kill him with this.”

      Simon reached into his trouser pocket and pulled out something that he tossed into the pit. I looked down and my stomach lurched. At my feet was a small wooden dagger. The tip was sharp, but the blade was dull. There would be no saving Bryce from pain.

      Slowly, I bent down and picked it up. It was incredibly light and smooth. It didn’t feel like a weapon, but a toy I might have used when I played pirates with my brother in the backyard so many years ago. You couldn’t kill someone with a toy. It wasn’t right.

      “Do it! You have until the count of three or I will kill you!” Simon shrieked, his voice cracking in his growing rage. “One!”

      “Gage.” A woman’s voice gently drew my attention back to Bryce.

      My head jerked up and I saw Lilith lying on the ground next to the pain-filled apprentice. She was on her side in a languorous pose with one arm curled around his head. “Send him to me, Gage. He’s in such pain. Set him free.”

      “Two!”

      “Set him free, Gage. Help your friend.”

      “Three!”

      I screamed, my voice hammering against the cold stone walls as I charged across the pit toward Bryce. The wooden blade was jerked over my head as I fell to my knees next to his prone body. All I saw were Bryce’s brown eyes widening in terror so that I was nearly drowning in them as I brought the knife down. The boy screamed in pain as the blade broke through his chest, but I had to bring all my weight down on the knife to push it through his heart.

      Blood splashed over my hands and I remember thinking that it wasn’t as warm as I thought it would be. I couldn’t take my eyes off him as I watched the light fade from his wide eyes.

      A cold hand cupped my cheek and I looked up to stare into the dark pools of nothing that composed Lilith’s eyes. She was smiling at me. “I’ll be coming for you soon, Gage. And you’ll set me free.”

      I screamed, the sound ripped out of my throat like a banshee’s wail. Something shook me hard and I jerked upright to find myself sitting on my bed with my brother kneeling on the edge, his hands braced on my shoulders. He said something, but I didn’t hear it past the pounding in my ears. As I gasped for air to scream again, my stomach lurched.

      Shoving him aside, I jumped off the bed only to get tangled in the sheets. I fell to my hands and knees, but managed to crawl the final few feet across the room to the small wastebasket before I started heaving my guts up. Bile burned its way along my throat and my lungs locked up, crying out for air. I couldn’t purge my mind of the memory, but my body could purge the contents of my stomach. Tears streamed down my cheeks, but I doubted it was because of the vomiting.

      When the spasms stopped, I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and fell to my side near the basket. I sucked in deep breaths, willing the shakes to stop as I lay there with my eyes closed. My skin was clammy and covered in a cold sweat, while my entire body hurt as if I had pulled every muscle.

      I hadn’t had a nightmare about my time in the Towers for years, and never one about Bryce. I had suppressed that bitch of a memory until I had forgotten about it completely. I had been thirteen when Simon first took me to that damned dueling pit. Bryce looked like he was no more than ten or eleven at the time. We had never met before that day, but I could still remember that nervous smile he had flashed me before we found out what we were expected to do. I remember thinking that he seemed like an okay kid and that if I had met him at home, he would have been someone I would have ridden bikes or played wiffle ball with. Instead, I killed him.

      Looking back nearly fifteen years later, I wasn’t sure what had spurred me on to kill him. I wanted to say I had been saving him from more pain and torture. Oh God, I wanted that to be the reason. But a slick and horrible voice whispered in my ear that I had killed Bryce because I had been afraid to die.

      “Gage?”

      I flinched at Robert’s voice despite its soft and gentle tone. The old wounds were suddenly fresh and the memory was raw in my mind. I was having trouble climbing back into the present, where I was free of Simon and the Towers.

      “What time is it?” My voice was rough and hoarse as it escaped my injured throat. I lay on the floor with one arm thrown over my eyes, blocking out the world a little longer. I wasn’t ready to look at my brother when I could still see Bryce’s wide brown eyes in my mind. Even more, I didn’t want my brother to look at me.

      “A little after one.”

      “Could you start some coffee? I’ve got to jump in the shower before I head to the parlor.”

      “Yeah. Yeah, I got it.” He didn’t move for several seconds and I think he was debating whether to ask me something, but he must have decided against it because he left my bedroom without speaking.

      When I was alone again, I moved my arm from my eyes and looked around my messy bedroom. The heavy curtains were pulled over the two windows, blanketing the room in a thick darkness that was broken only by light pouring from the open door. Clean and dirty clothes were strewn everywhere along with all the other bits of flotsam accumulated in the normal course of a life. The familiar helped to push back the swell of ugly memories from the Towers and the pain dulled to a throbbing ache that sank in to become a part of my soul.

      Around three in the morning, Robert and I had come back to my apartment, where we watched a movie before he crashed on the couch. I made it to my bed, where I slipped into a sleep that left me dead to the world and the trouble that was brewing.

      Wincing, I shoved to my feet, but paused as my eyes caught on the bed. I rarely dreamed about the Towers and that was the first time I had ever dreamed about Lilith. Was it a nightmare brought on by the stress of Robert’s news? Maybe my mind demanding that I confront something that I refused to think about—my dwindling time until I paid my debt. Or was the nightmare a warning? Was my time almost up? Would I soon have to pay for the year that I owed magic?

      Shaking my head, I grabbed a pair of clean boxers, jeans, and a T-shirt without looking at them and headed for the bathroom. Fear curled in my queasy stomach. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to leave Trixie and Bronx in the lurch if I suddenly died. If all went well, I’d be back in a year. I was afraid of facing Lilith for that year in the underworld. As keeper of all visiting souls, she was going to make my year an undead hell unless I found a way to set her free so that she could visit the land of the living on a more permanent basis.

      And this world had enough to deal with. It didn’t need someone like her running around.

      Stripping off my dirty boxers, I turned on the water and jumped into the shower, not giving it time to warm up. The cold water cleared away the last of the fog and got my brain working past the old memories and horrors. If Reave was threatening to bring the world to war and put my brother in the dead center of it all, I needed to be thinking clearly. The only problem was that I didn’t have a fucking clue as to what I was going to do, but I needed to figure it out fast. Preferably before the Towers learned that the puny mortals were plotting something.

      As the water warmed up, I grabbed the shampoo and lathered my hair, wishing I could wash my mind clean just as easily. The bathroom door opened and I stilled for a second before ducking under the spray to rinse away the soap.

      “Gage?” Trixie’s voice rose above the rush of water, pushing СКАЧАТЬ