Secret Worlds (27 page)

Please, God, do something
.

A shot rang across my field of vision, nearly striking Abram in the head. Turning to the left, I saw Mr. McKenzie, gun pointed toward the beast. They were waking up—the entire town. And that meant that, once again, the game had changed.

“It’s back!” Dalton screamed. “The monster is back!”

I spun my gaze toward him, only to find Dalton had already morphed back into human form, his clothes hanging in tatters off his body.
The devil
. He’d created the perfect scene to further incite the mob: a battered detective hero, the bleeding damsel in distress, and the hulking beast waging war on this sleepy peaceful town.

One by one, the people of the town encroached on this tableau, an entire town, readying themselves for the kill.

“Abram …” I murmured, reaching out helplessly toward him.

He pounded his clawed-fists against the ground, getting onto all fours. He looked at me and then shook his head forward, snorting. I knew what he wanted. With what little strength I had remaining, I thrust myself onto his back and grabbed a handful of fur.

Abram took off, driving a path through the terrified townspeople. The muscles in his back flexed as the wind picked up around me. It was almost like flying, moving through Main Street quicker than I had ever gone before. But where were we going? Where
could
we go? There was no escaping this.

When Abram’s paws hit hard against the pavement to take an all-too-familiar left, I knew where he was headed, even before he descended the staircase—the very one I fell down the day we met.

Abram burst through the locked doors of The Castle and darted down the hall, huffing as he settled in front of the strangely marked door.

He lowered his back, and I climbed off. Chanting and clanging and thundering from the streets poured in now. The mob was legion. And they were coming.

The beast stood and, slowly but surely, morphed back into Abram. His shape returned before my very eyes, naked, muscular, and mouthwatering.

“How are you doing this?” I asked.

“The room,” he said as his voice returned. “This room, it’s letting me do it.”

“How?” I asked, my voice shaking.

A loud crash echoed from down the hall. From here I could just barely make out what it was: someone had thrown a lit bottle through the window. A table caught fire, and it quickly spread to the drapes.

“My God,” I said.

He took my arm gently. “We have to go inside. You’re losing a lot of blood.”

I’d nearly forgotten my own wounds; I’d been staring at Abram, whose body was unmarred, no evidence of his injuries remaining. I hadn’t noticed the blood streaming past the cloth Abram had used to tie off my wound. I was dripping blood all over the floor.

I gasped and stumbled back, about to faint at the sight of all the blood—worse, somehow, coming from my body. A body I knew would not heal itself.

Abram caught me and pulled me against him. “The room will protect us. Get inside.”

But I just stood there, frozen, unable to pull my gaze from the fire. The flames licked up the walls the same as fear burned in my core. Abram pushed the previously unmovable door open and swept me inside.

A soft light—like moonlight—swelled around us, so pale it was nearly blinding. He pushed the door closed behind us and, slowly, my eyes adjusted to the light.

But my mind could not comprehend what I saw.

No sooner had my feet crossed the secret room’s threshold than something flared inside of me. Some pieces of myself, parts that I didn’t even fully realize existed, started lighting up and falling into place. The light here shimmered in flecks of gold, sort of like the way my blood looked when it came in contact with someone magical.

As the light washed over me, all my pain subsided, all my wounds tingled into a glorious numbness. Once my eyes adjusted from the burst of light, I began to take stock of the room. It was quaint, nearly empty. Nothing inside betrayed whatever importance existed within these walls. Why had keeping me out of here been so important? And why was this barren space able to keep us safe now when all other areas came up lacking?

Something was wrong about all this. I couldn’t pinpoint what, but unease was seeping through my bloodstream, rapidly replacing that brief moment of peace the light had afforded me.

I turned to Abram, my heart nearly stopping in my chest at the sight of him. While I’d ventured farther into the room, he’d waited just by the door. He was stunningly handsome, of course, but that’s not why my heart stopped. His eyes were so full of sorrow, and yet his expression was calm, his body language confident. I could only explain it as a quiet resolve. But it made me more concerned.

“Abram …” I said, watching his face carefully. He was scared about something. “The place is on fire Abram. There’s a mob building outside the door. Shouldn’t we be running?”

“It’ll be okay,” Abram said. But there was too much apology in his voice.

“Please, no more secrets.” I shook my head and splayed my hands. “How can anything be okay? How, Abram?”

His Adam’s apple bobbed, and his jaw tensed. His chest puffed up a little as he took a deep breath, and I expected him to approach me, but he didn’t. I wished he would.

“There’s something you should know about this room,” he said finally. “About this town actually.”

Oh, no
.
Here is it
.
More things I don’t want to know
.

But they were things I needed to know. I turned away, blinking back tears as anxiety throttled in my chest. “We don’t have much time, do we?”

“No,” he said. “We don’t. But it’s not what you think.”

My gaze landed on a crucifix on the wall and a stained glass window that sat under it. That window, with its red moon almost completely colored in—I had seen it before. I had seen this entire room before. But where?

“Oh, God,” I muttered as the answer came to me, as soft as the last whispers of a peaceful dream. “Satina. This is the room where it happened.”

“This is the genesis point,” he said, his voice gravelly. “The origin of the curse that, even now, still envelopes me.”

“That was here?” I asked, moving closer to the window. I turned to face him. “But it was a monastery. You said you burned it down.”

“I attempted to burn it down,” he said, eyes plastered on the floor. Even now, it seemed, the incident still brought about shame in him. “They don’t make buildings like they used to. The fire destroyed most of the interior, but the structure remained intact. And this room was completely untouched.”

“I don’t suppose that’s coincidence,” I answered, running my finger across the colored-in moon.

“Sometimes, if the magic is strong enough during a certain event or occurrence, it leaves something of an imprint on the area affected.” I felt him behind me, the heat of his human form radiating on my skin. “The magic that envelopes this room was made for me. To
curse
me. But part of that curse is also what keeps me alive.”

“Well, what good is a curse if you’re not alive to suffer through it?” I asked as he ran his fingers down my arm.

“That’s the idea,” he answered. His lips traced my hair, settling along my ear. “It’s stopped me from being able to end my life during my darker moments of the last century.”

My throat tightened at the thought of that, and although I knew emotions came from the mind and not the heart, I still felt that honest-to-God heartache in my chest. “You tried to … to what?”

“Shh,” he breathed into my ear. “It was a long time ago, before I had something to live for. Before you.”

My heart fluttered. I felt myself dancing close to a cliff that would drop me right off into ecstasy. It was strong. The way it always was with Abram. His musk, his lips—they all joined to form the sweetest and most seductive song I had ever heard. But I couldn’t allow myself to be seduced, not right now.

“Abram, they’re right outside.”

“And that’s where they’ll stay,” he answered, hands wrapping my waist.

“The fire,” I breathed.

“Won’t cross into this room. I promise you,” he said low into my ear. “The magic here is strong, Charisse. You need to trust it, to trust
me
. We don’t have much time.”

“I do trust you,” I answered wholeheartedly, looking into his eyes that were dark and mysterious pools. “But you’re also scaring me. What do you mean we don’t have much time? If this room will protect us—”

I cut myself short as my gaze fell back onto the painted moon. That was it. The stained glass moon was much fuller than the one on the door—less of a crescent, more of a waxing moon—nearly full, in fact.

“What does this mean?” I asked, waving my hand at the symbol. “People don’t just have empty rooms with moon symbols on the door and stained glass displays with moons to match inside.”

“You’re right,” he said.

I narrowed my eyes at me. “It means something, though, doesn’t it? It has something to do with your curse.”

He shook his head,
but something in his eyes told me I was right.

“Tell me.”

“Please don’t, Charisse. I’ve told you many things. I don’t want to—” He nearly choked on the word. Anger clouded his expression, and he jutted his finger toward the painted glass moon. “I don’t want to talk about
that
.”

I looked from him to the moon and back again. “Abram, if you don’t tell me what it means, I’m going to walk out that door.”

When he didn’t stay anything, I started to storm past him, ready to play this game of chicken, fire and all. But he grabbed me by the wrist and pulled my body against his. His hands were firm, but his expression was gentle.

“Tell me,” I demanded quietly.

He wrapped his arms around me and rested his cheek against my forehead. “This is my last full moon. After tonight, the curse will be permanent. Every night, for the rest of eternity, this will be my life, with no hope of ever changing that. I’ll be this … this … 
thing
 … forever.”

“But there’s a way to break it,” I said. “There has to be. Just do whatever Satina said it was. What’s the worst that could happen, Abram?”

“The worst?” he whispered, his voice nearly cracking. “Losing you.”

I pulled back and shook my head. “You won’t lose me, Abram.”

“You don’t know that.”

I balled my hands in fists at my side. “Well, neither do you.”

His finger came up to my lips. “Please, Charisse. Don’t argue with me right now.”

“I don’t want to argue with you Abram. I’m not the one who cares if you are a beast.
You are
. I’m trying to help you. Why won’t you just let me help you?”

“If you want to help me, then be with me. Please, just be with me and let me do what I’m meant to do. I promised I would protect you, and I will.”

Something rumbled in the room, and a voice echoed through the chamber. “I’m not sure how seriously I would take
that
promise.”

I knew that voice. It was the same one that kept me up at night, and when it did allow me sleep, it was the same voice that haunted my dreams.

But it couldn’t be. It wasn’t possible. He was dead.

And yet, the voice of my father continued. “Given that he gave the same promise to me. And we all know how well that turned out.”

I jerked away from Abram’s touch and spun around. My father stood behind Abram, arms folded and staring at me with those eyes that I had come to both miss and vilify. My entire body went rigid. How was this happening?

Well, that was a stupid question. I knew
how
it was happening. It was this magic, the one surrounding us, the one we were—even now—breathing in.

My face must have been a horrible thing to behold, because Abram took my hand and squeezed it tightly.

“What do you see?” he asked.

He knew. Somehow he knew the magic was showing me something.

“My father,” I whispered, my voice sounding weak and small, the way it did when I was a child.

My father moved around Abram, almost floating toward me with his lightness. It wasn’t like him, to move this way, to have a look on his face that screamed of mischievous glee. Or maybe it did. I hadn’t seen my father since I was a kid, and even the man I knew then was a lie. That much was obvious.

Why was I even thinking this way? My father loved me. Abram being here was proof of that. Why was I forgetting everything I had learned about the man?

“You need to run, Charisse. You can’t trust this thing.” My father looked Abram over with disgust darkening his eyes. “He’ll use you up, even more than he already has. He’ll destroy you. He lies. Everything he says is a lie.”

My father moved closer, and my entire body trembled. “But that’s what you like, isn’t it? That’s what you want from your men.” He shook his head. “Is that what I did to you? Did I ruin my little girl?”

“What?” I balked, backing away. “Of course not.”

Abram’s hand squeezed mine. “It’s not real, Charisse. It comes from the curse, and the curse wants me to suffer. It doesn’t want to be broken.”

Abram’s comforting grip did little to steady me. All I could see was my father’s eyes, weighing me, judging me, finding me lacking. And all of this to keep some curse going. But how would me suffering keep the century-old punishment that Satina leveled onto him running strong?

“You need to run, Charisse!” My father’s voice was panicked now.

No.
Not
my father. I leaned in toward the apparition.

“Go away,” I said firmly. “You’re not gonna win this one.”

“Get away from this monster!” my ‘father’ demanded, a cloud of anger storming across his face. His face twisted and darkened, and his eyes disappeared as he bent disgustingly into a dark shadowy creature. It was the magic. It was the curse. “I’ve healed your wounds so you can run, not so you could stand here staring like a fool! Now go away and leave him to suffer on his own!”

It was greedy, this curse. It wanted to strip away all light from Abram’s life, as though it fed on the darkness, as though it needed it to survive.

“It’s me, isn’t it?” I asked, turning to Abram and connecting the puzzle pieces. All the strange things Satina said, the way she looked at me … and now the way this room was attacking my devotion to Abram. It all made sense now. “I can break the curse, can’t I?”