Tainted Legacy (YA Paranormal Romance) (38 page)

***

Gabriel was falling.

It didn’t matter.

He had seen Ava’s face. Overflowing with anguish, infinite, indefinable despair.

He had saved her.

He had hurt her.

He could hear her screaming.

Crying out for him.

Even though it was only in her head.

Entangled in horror, imbued with regret for being…
him
.

Hell wasn’t fire and brimstone. But it was a torturous, agonizing burning. A burning…a ceaseless hunger for what you could not have. It was a smoldering, unending desire to return to those who held your heart. It was precisely for this reason that others like him could live comfortably in the realm of Hell. No one, absolutely no one, could hold the heart of the heartless.

Ava had changed him. He knew with an unequivocal certainty that he would find himself aflame in the pits for all of eternity. Burning with want and need for Ava. Burning with shame and remorse for all of the iniquitous things he had done. Burning with a desire, a yearning for the utterly impossible…to have lived his life differently.

Gabriel was falling.

And then he wasn’t.

Epilogue

Gabe was gone.

Grier was gone.

Ava’s parents had cried when the social worker had led Grier away, purportedly to go live with her recently found mother.

Grier was going home.

No one questioned it. The abruptness of it.

Ava had to assume Rafe was not alone in his ability to persuade.

Ava had not cried. She was not sad to see Grier go.

Ava’s family and friends were inexplicably under the impression that Gabe had to go away. That Gabe, perhaps, was suffering from a terminal ailment. It would explain Ava’s excessive tears and melancholy, a case of grief too severe to be attributed to a normal break-up. But the questions, the questions one would expect from friends and family never really came.

Neither did any questions as to her whereabouts the time she was missing.

Another case of intense persuasion?

Ava thought it likely.

Perhaps she should be grateful that Grier had at least taken care of that for her. How would she ever explain to her parents where she’d been or what had happened? No one had asked. It was as if she’d never gone missing at all. It was all wrapped up so neat and tidy. As if he had never existed. As if he could be easily forgotten.

Gabe’s car was gone from the church parking lot as well. The shattered stained-glass window was as pristine as it had been the day it was put in. She had found her blood-spattered hoodie—the one she’d used to wipe away Gabe’s blood, the same one she’d left behind in the church—hanging spotlessly clean in hely ad foundr closet.

She was hollow inside.

Empty.

But
she
had questions that were screaming, begging, pleading to be answered. To fill the void.

The void of unknowing.

She’d already driven out to the abandoned church. She’d sat there for hours. The only trace of Gabe, or any of them really, were their footprints scuffed through the dust by the altar.

There was no trace of the demon’s snare. The etchings were gone. The floor remained as if it had never caved away at all.

The last words he had spoken to her were like an echo continuously haunting her thoughts.

I love you more than you can possibly imagine.

Ava had gone to her cabin after the church. She wanted to be in the place where she’d last spent time with him. She’d found his wallet on the nightstand by her bed. It contained an absurd amount of cash, money he had told her he had wanted her to run away with.

His black leather jacket, the one he’d been wearing the night he’d come to get her, the same one he’d been wearing the day they’d gone for a ride, was neatly folded at the end of the bed. Those two items were the only trace that he’d ever been there.

Shortly after Gabe had disappeared, Grier had touched her forehead again. She’d awakened the next morning to find herself asleep in her bed. Her life seemingly untouched.

But it had been touched. It had been shredded and torn. And she needed answers. Although she knew any answers she received could not possibly repair the damage that had been done.

She grabbed her car keys, slipped out of the house unnoticed. She headed to the only place that could possibly provide her with any details about Gabe.

“You can’t go there,” Grier said, appearing beside Ava without warning.

Ava screamed, swerved, hit the curb, missed a pedestrian, swore and kept on driving all in what seemed like a millisecond.

“Don’t do that!” she shrieked.

“It would be unwise to go to the Castille home,” Grier warned. “Gabe believes Rafe will be pleased that his brother and father are gone. He has inherited much. You are likely nothing more than a speck of a concern to him. I suggest you stay away to keep it so.”

“Where is Gabe?” Ava demanded.

“Turn hean">

As much as she did not want to talk to Grier, she wanted, she
needed
an explanation so she did as Grier asked. She parked her car in the most secluded spot she could find.

“Where is he,” Ava grated out as she turned in her seat to face the girl who was not her sister. Who was not even a girl. Who was not even human. “
Where is he
?!” The car vibrated with the intensity of the question. Grier stared at her in that hard, uncanny way she had always had. “Is he in Hell?” Ava finally whispered.

“No.
Not anymore. He was briefly. As the cage fell in but he is not there now.
”

The tears started to stream down Ava’s face, silent and relieved. Her worst fear was that he was trapped in the pits of fiery cobalt flame, trapped with the monster that had been his father.

“Why did he have to die?” she finally whispered.

“The moment he told me of his plan, I warned him that I could only create the snare. I could not seal it. It could only be sealed from the inside. It could only be sealed with demon’s blood. The blood of an angel and the blood of a demon cannot coexist. He could have simply used his blood and not taken his life but he would’ve been trapped inside with Azael, living out the next decades of his existence in unbearable torment. Would you have preferred that?”

“I would
prefer
that he was here with me!” Ava turned to Grier, making no attempt to hide her anger. “You
said
you would not interfere. You told us that you would
not
disobey the command you were given. But you did. First by putting your blood on my palms and later…by
making sure I couldn’t move. That I couldn’t stop him! You were only given permission to create the snare. You were
not
allowed to interfere. But you did.”

Grier stared straight ahead, as if Ava had not spoken.

“You shouldn’t have done it,” Ava bitterly replied. “You had no right. Permission was not granted to you. You should have let me stop him. You went against your orders by protecting me like you did. You shouldn’t have done it. You should have let me be!”

Grier’s gaze finally met Ava’s. “I did not do it to save
you
.” Her voice was so soft Ava had to strain to hear her. “I did it to save
him
. And I did receive permission. After I created the sigils, I pled Gabe’s case. A soul was hanging in the balance. It was my duty to try to see it saved. I was granted permission only moments before I retrieved you from the cabin.”

“How was it your duty?” Ava whispered. “I thought it didn’t matter to you who lived and who died?”

“I was not trying to save his life, Ava,” Grier carefully explained. “I was trying to help him save his
soul
.”

Ava’s ragged breathing seemed to echo through the car. She’d cried her teardrops dry and she had no more to spare for today. She tried to make sense of Grier’s words but nothing made sense to her at the moment.

“He sacrificed himself readily. You should know that, first and foremost,” Grier explained. “He did so without realizing that his action would redeem him for all of his prior sins. He did it selflessly. Willingly. It was the only way for him to be granted pure redemption.”

“I failed him,” Ava miserably acknowledged.

“You saved him. By allowing him to save you, he saved himself. Dying young to save your soul is worth more than countless lifetimes that embrace evil and damnation.” Grier stopped as though lost in thought. Ava waited numbly for her to continue. “He did not have a guarantee that his blood would seal the snare. Neither a demon nor a demon’s descendant has ever offered themselves up as a sacrificial seal. It was only in theory that it would work. You were the one who convinced him to have faith.”

“He died because of me,” Ava realized, mortified.

“He was saved because of you,” Grier corrected. “Without that selfless act, his soul would have been damned. Now he has been saved and Azael is locked away, as he was meant to be.”

Ava knew Grier’s words were meant to be comforting. Maybe someday they would be the balm she craved. Now, they were like acid on her battered soul.

“So, was it all a lie? That Azael believed I was destined for greatness? That my life in this world would make a difference? That I was important?”

“I believe the way you will choose to live your life will still be of great importance. But what happened with Gabriel
was
the importance that Azael spoke of. You were the key. You were the test. Azael meant for Gabriel to love you. He chose you because you are pure and good. He placed you with the St. Clair’s because he thought it would only enhance your innate goodness. And then he meant for Gabriel to kill you. Thus extinguishing any sliveringin thoug of goodness in him as it freed his infinite capacity for evil. Like Azael did, I have seen the future Ava, the future that
would’ve befallen this world if Gabriel had chosen that path. Gabriel was capable of more evil than you could comprehend. He simply had not come into it in its entirety yet. Your death by his hand was to be the key that unlocked the floodgate.”

“He could never have been that person,” Ava said stubbornly in his defense.

“He had already done things, evil, wicked things that you may not have been able to forgive him for. But still, it was not enough for his father. Azael knew from the time Gabriel was very young that he was different. That he harbored a shred of humanity that was worrisome to him.

“By choosing this path for Gabriel, Azael thought he could break him. He thought he could prove to Gabriel that he owned him, had complete and total control over him. That he could have nothing. That any shred of hope, any glimmer of love that he ever felt could be quashed by his father at any moment. Azael was trying to teach Gabriel a lesson.”

Grier sighed. “Azael’s vanity, his pride ran so deep he never believed for a moment that his son would make any other choice than that of following his direction. And by doing so, effectively dashing out that shred of light in Gabe, he would become completely dark. Completely evil as Azael believed was his destiny.”