Page 62 of The Final Deal

“And you haven’t bothered to tell someone?” Adrian yells. “What the fuck, bro? You could’ve fucking killed her!Again!”

The twins bicker loudly, playing a bad match of argumentative tennis as the accusations fly between them, but I’m not here with them as I fall to the couch—I’m on the bridge on that rainy night when I went out hunting for him after my first show back with Timeless. The storm, the bridge, la lechuza, they all come flooding in, fresh and bloody, at the forefront of my mind.

I grabbed him, brought him here to the house, and I asked what happened, but he never gave me a straight answer.

“You never said what you made your deal for,” I pipe up, loud enough to catch their attention to stop their arguing. “You made a deal for your life, but you never said for what. How are you a vampireanda lechuzo?”

Zak shrugs. “I guess brujos get a double whammy.”

He doesn’t offer anything further as I stare at him.

I didn’t give up my soul until I was face-to-face with the devil; I made my first deal with Shannon to rejoin Timeless inexchange for my life. Zak didn’t elaborate much that night, but I remember he explicitly said his deal was in exchange for his life.

“You never gave up your soul, did you?”

He looks away. Then, he shakes his head.

Bile rises in my esophagus and burns my throat.

“Then what'd you make your deal for, Z? Your life in exchange for what?”

Finally, he moves, sitting on the couch caddy-corner to me. His tattooed fingers run through his hair a couple of times before he rests his elbows on his knees. When he speaks, it’s hardly more than a whisper. “I… I don't want you to hate me.”

Fear clenches around my heart like a vise. “Zak, what did you do?”

“Babe, you gotta know: I was dying. I was literally blinking the rest of my life away, taking my last breath when I did it?—”

“What the fuck did you do?”

He throws his hands away from his face, revealing glassy eyes that avoid my questioning glare. “He… he told me I’d get to live if I handed you over to him.”

The silence becomes a distant cacophony as I glimpse out the window into a bright and sunny morning.

First, my mother sold me out.

Now, the man I’ve loved for so long and gave my heart to has admitted to it, too.

“But I couldn’t do that to you, babe. Not when I realized you were the one who found me after it happened. I fucking regret agreeing to it, but I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t. So I decided I wouldn’t do it, and you took us home, and then… and then the cravings started. I kissed you, and all I wanted was to bite into your neck and drain you dry, so I did what I could to keep you away from me.”

When I refocus on the other bodies in the room, Adrian watches me with sorrow straining his features, like finding outhe was so close to losing his brother rips one part of his heart and realizing he’s also the reason why he almost lost the love of his life tugs at the other half.

Zak blinks rapidly with tears shimmering in his eyes, like he’s trying to get them to go away, but they refuse. “I think that’s why I turned: if I wasn’t upholding my end of the deal for my life, then the devil made sure he was going to get you some other way. So… so I turned into a vampire that wanted only your blood.”

“So why doesn’t he crave your blood anymore?” Adrian questions. “Because I can guarantee that shit didn’t magically disappear on its own.”

Betrayal guts my heart out of my chest as I grit my teeth. “I did what I had to do.”

Chapter 24

Wishing Wells

–Parkway Drive

The ringon my finger is a lie. My life is a lie.

The devil was out to get me, and now he has me tied up in a web more complicated than what the garden spiders weave on the patio. He slithered into my life like the snake that he is, promised the world, and turned it upside down and shook it hard to royally fuck anything and everything up.

Everyone in my life is a fucking two-faced liar. I’ve given up everything for them, and for what?

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