Page 142 of Dark Souls

“Okay?”

“I was going to say, sane.” Luka smirked. “He’s always been the wilder side of me and when I had my humanity, I often had to talk him out of things. But then I gave up trying to be good. I stopped caring. Now, I am not sure which of us is crazier.”

“He’s a little sane and a whole lot of insane.” I smiled, shuffling myself closer to sit between his open legs and bringing my hands up to his face. “But he’s also brilliant. He’s creative. He’s hilarious. He’s passionate. And he’s still you. He misses you too.”

He nodded and exhaled, looking back down at the stake in his hands. “A few days after the attack on my home, I finally gave in to my mama and took us back there. I didn’t think it was a good idea but she wanted to find my father’s bones. She was adamant she had to. That his soul would never find peace if she didn’t have them. I searched for them until the sun set, but I never found them beneath the rubble and scorched wood. That was her ultimate breaking point. The moment she stopped being my mama and just gave up. My brother’s body was nothing but ash so I carved out a chunk of a scorched beam that they had tied him to and made this knife. The moment I touched it, it burned my skin. Hellfire. It scars. It hurts. If I was in my demon form and this was driven through my heart, it would kill me.” He pressed the blade to his wrist. Smoke sizzled against his flesh and blood seeped beneath the blade. I grabbed his hand and pulled it away, pressing my palm to his wound and squeezed until he glanced up at me with dead eyes.

“Don’t. Hurting yourself will never bring him back.”

“But it makes me feel just an ounce of the pain he would have felt being burned alive.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. Instead, I lifted my hand off his to study the cut. Bending down, I licked the blood away tenderly and pressed a kiss to his torn skin.Kiss it better. When I glanced up, Luka was staring at me with a halo of green pushing through the red of his irises. I could see the love fighting to make itself known. I smiled, placed my hand back in his and told him to keep going.

Luka continued to explain what it was like being on the run and in hiding for the months after. How he worried he wouldn’t be able to keep them all alive in the harsh winters or from lack of food. He explained how his mother had refused to feed, or talk, or do anything after the death of his father. She once told him she’d never forgive him. That truly broke my heart. I knew she would have been speaking from a place of grief and hurt but I hated that Luka still held onto those words. He knew he’d made a mistake in trusting Belladonna. To live with that guilt was bad enough. He talked me through the times the coven had captured him. The first time was the memory I had seen of him being chased through the forest in a dream. Where he’d let his rage expose him. He told me some things they did to him to make him shift into Heathen, but I knew he was sparing me some of the horrors he probably endured. The fact he was that mentally and physically strong to withstand such brutality for so long was unbelievable. He said, knowing he was all his sister had was what forced him to never surrender. That he couldn’t fail her, too. He knew as soon as he allowed Heathen to emerge, he’d be killed.

He talked about how his mother’s sacrifice helped him to escape the first capture. By drinking her blood, consuming his father’s bloodline the way Zoran was destined to, gave him the strength he needed to fight against a few coven members’ magic and escape. That’s when he inherited his telekinetic and identity-snatching powers, too. They helped him stay hidden and protected him and Hana for longer. Hearing about his second capture was harder; they experimented on his soul possession, failing and killing him repeatedly in vampire form, only for him to resurrect and endure it again. It was even harder to hear about Hana’s capture and his attempt to save her, resulting in them being imprisoned together. He said that was the worst thing of all. Watching them do to her what they were doing to him.

“It said in the diary that both of you had been captured and died.”

“They must have lied because they probably had to submit or publish those documents to all the Slayers. As far as I am aware, after 1934, the world thought the last Demonski Upirs were dead. That our breed was extinct. Everyone except the Knowltons and…” He paused. There was a look in his eyes that caused my heartbeat to become erratic.

“And?”

“The Anderson sisters, Cora and Celeste, and The Vampire King, Lucius Romano.”

Trembling, I dropped my head into my hands. I knew it was possible, but I didn’t want to believe it. I knew my great-grandparents had dark pasts and weren’t very good people. I knew my grandpapi’s mum, Cora Anderson, had tried to redeem herself in her last three decades, but I’m not sure this was something I could ever forgive.

“The coven asked for their help, didn’t they? To create the spell to control Heathen.” I couldn’t even look at him.

“Yes. The sisters came here. Studied me and Hana for about a month. They went away and worked on the spell for nearly a year. Only Celeste came back to use it, though and she was with Lucius Romano. He’d watched on with pride in his eyes as his soulmate took from me the only person I thought I could never lose. It worked on the first attempt. That attempt was on me. The spell was so powerful it broke my connection to Heathen completely. I could no longer talk to him or control my shifts. I couldn’t use any of his powers. It’s as if he didn’t exist. I lost a huge part of my identity that day. I gave up for a long time. They bound his soul to a sigil that Alatar Knowlton wore around his neck. It stopped me and Heathen from harming him or any other coven member. The Anderson sisters had given him a grimoire with a special coded spell. All he had to do was repeat the spell and rub the sigil and I’d shift into Heathen without my permission. I’d black out completely until Heathen was summoned back into the depths of our mind and I would have lost hours, days, sometimes weeks of my life with no recollection of what I had done. It’s been that way ever since. They did the same to Hana and kept us away from each other. They would use me to commit horrendous acts for their greed, amusement and power, either as Heathen or as myself, threatening to kill Hana’s demon in the most painful way, if I refused. I realised if they were focused on me, they left her alone, more or less.”

“Fuck!” I shouted. “No wonder you have acted so weird about my brother and Anderson magic. Why? Why would they agree to help the Knowltons? If I know anything about my great-grandparents, it was that they were selfish. They wouldn’t have done this if there was nothing in it for themselves.”

“Money. Power. Allies. The Knowltons were an intimidating force in Europe. They had huge influence. The Andersons were lone witches who didn’t belong to any coven. That was a dangerous position to be in, even with their talents. Alatar offered the Andersons the coven’s help whenever needed. The Knowltons even helped Lucius to kill all the wolf packs after Celeste’s death. It was only when they realised he’d lost his focus and was driven mad by grief that they cut ties, not wanting the negative attention of the enchanted council that he was gaining rapidly. It wasn’t until Lucius died that everything shifted.”

“What do you mean? What shifted?”

“Power. The Knowltons had lost many of their feared allies and a shift in power among supernaturals was emerging. The wolves were making a comeback, with your grandparents leading them. Arius was the new vampire king and that divided the vampire clans, some sticking by him and others deciding he was a traitor to their kind when he helped the wolves kill Lucius. The Knowltons were getting twitchy. The enchanted council were onto them, starting to dig into the workings ofThe Undergroundand they no longer had the vampire clans or the Andersons support. The pressure was building and causing fractures in the coven. They decided it was best to get rid of me and Hana. I believed they planned to kill us, but to my surprise, The Underground put us up for auction. Turns out they were more greedy than sensible. It was actually Belladonna’s idea to auction us to the highest bidder. I still have no idea why she suggested it to this day.”

“And that is how you came to be controlled by The Devil? So he was a member ofThe Undergroundwhen The Knowltons were running it?”

He nodded, before his whole body filled with tension and his red eyes snapped over my head towards the window. He suddenly threw me against the wall, his immense body covering mine as he clamped his hand over my mouth. My eyes quizzed him as he lifted a finger to his lips and stared out the window.

“Someone is here,” he whispered, his voice tight and low. “Transport yourself out of here, right now.”

“But–” I argued, not wanting to leave him here alone.

“Now!” he hissed. “And don’t do anything stupid, Ilaria. I’ll text you when they are gone.”

I could hear crunching on the gravel outside now, heavy footsteps up the veranda. Male.

“I broke my phone!”

“Go! They will scent you otherwise,” he hissed more urgently as the door to the manor creaked open.

Ilaria vanished behind a puff of black smoke from between my arms and I moved rapidly to stand in the hallway, closing the library door to hide the evidence that I hadn’t been here alone just as The Devil closed the front door.

He turned to face me with a look of surprise on his disguised face to find me standing there waiting for him. I gave him a look of confusion in return, trying to control my pounding heart before he heard it. That was too fucking close.

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