Unforgiven fallen book 5, p.24
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Unforgiven (Fallen Book 5), page 24

 

Unforgiven (Fallen Book 5)
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  “Sure.” Tears stung her eyes. “We should have won. Right? I mean, we were good—”

  “We did win,” Cam said. “We won something better.”

  “What?” Lilith asked.

  Cam glanced toward Luc. “You’ll see.”

  “Contestants, please exit stage left,” the crew boy said.

  The Slights were escorted to a card table that had been set up next to the judges’ table. On it sat a folded paper placard that read Reserved for Winners. The other bands squeezed into the wings. Cam took Lilith’s hand. “Come with me. I know a place where we can watch the Four Horsemen.”

  “Not so fast,” Luc said as he took Lilith’s other hand.

  She was caught onstage between the two of them, wanting to go with Cam, wondering what Luc wanted. She looked out at the audience, surprised to feel as nervous as she’d been before her performance. On the school’s Jumbotron, the huge clock read 11:45. Lilith’s usual curfew was midnight, but since her mother and Bruce were in the audience, Lilith could probably get away with staying out later.

  “So it comes to pass,” Luc said into his microphone, “that Love and Idleness, Death of the Author, and Revenge are not the only losers tonight. All those who entered tonight’s lyrics contest…are also losers. All of you except for one.”

  Lilith’s breath caught in her chest. She had nearly forgotten the email from Ike Ligon. The Four Horsemen were about to cover her song.

  Her disappointment waned. Winning the Battle of the Bands would have been great, but the music she made onstage with Cam, Jean, and Luis was what mattered. Everything else was gravy.

  “I’ve asked Lilith to stay onstage,” Luc said to the audience, “because I think she knows the song the Four Horsemen are about to play.”

  A curtain rose at the back of the stage, and behind it were the Four Horsemen. Rod, the beefy dark-haired bass player, gave the audience a wave. Joe, the eccentric blond drummer, held his drumsticks aloft with a bemused expression. Matt, the keyboard player, was glancing at his set list. And in the center of the stage, Ike Ligon, Lilith’s musical idol, looked at her and grinned.

  She couldn’t help it. Lilith screamed, along with every other girl and three quarters of the boys in the audience.

  “This is so cool,” she said to Cam.

  He just smiled and gave her hand a squeeze. There was no one Lilith would rather be here with than Cam. This moment was perfect.

  Ike locked eyes with her and said, “This one’s for Lilith. It’s called ‘Vows.’ ”

  Lilith blinked. She’d never written a song called “Vows.” Her heart started racing, and she didn’t know what to do. Should she tell someone there’d been a mistake? Maybe Ike had simply gotten the title wrong?

  But by then it was too late. The band began to play.

  “I give my arms to you

  I give my eyes to you

  I give my scars to you

  And all my lies to you

  What will you give

  To me?”

  The song was beautiful, but Lilith hadn’t written it. And yet, as she listened, chords began to jump out to her in the fraction of a second before the band played them, as if she could anticipate where the song was going.

  Before she realized what she was doing, the words were in her mouth and she was singing, too—because somehow she knew “Vows” was meant to be a duet:

  “I give my heart to you

  I give the sky to you

  But if I give my speed to you

  I cannot fly to you

  What will you give

  To me?”

  A boy’s voice filled her ears, singing along to this song she somehow knew from deep within her soul. Only it wasn’t Ike.

  It was Cam. There were tears in his eyes as he sang, his gaze locked on Lilith.

  “I give a heart to you

  I give a soul to you

  I give a start to you

  Do you know what to do?”

  Why did it feel like they had sung this song together before?

  They couldn’t have. But when she closed her eyes, a vision came to her: the two of them seated before a body of water. It was not the fading trickle of Rattlesnake Creek but a swelling, crystal river somewhere far away and long ago.

  She’d just written the song, for him. She wanted him to like it. She could see in his eyes that he did. She could feel it in his kiss when he bent down and graced her lips with his. There was no strain between them, no resentment, and no fear. Wherever, whenever they were, she had loved him deeply, and they had been practicing for something—a wedding.

  Their wedding.

  Somewhere, long ago, Cam and Lilith had been engaged.

  Lilith opened her eyes.

  The Four Horsemen were just finishing the song. The guitar cut out, and Ike sang the final line a cappella.

  “What will you give to me?”

  The crowd burst into applause. Lilith stood still.

  Cam took a step toward her. “Lilith?”

  Her body shook. Light exploded before Lilith’s eyes, blinding her.

  When she could see again, her gown looked different: whiter, and without Arriane’s alterations. Lilith blinked, making out what looked like a dark cave at sunset, the sky fiery with streaks of red and orange. She was still facing Cam, just as she’d been facing him onstage.

  She clutched her hands over her heart, not understanding why it hurt so much. She spoke words in a language that was new to her, but that she somehow understood.

  “The night you left, I dreamt I taught a flock of nightingales a love song, so they could find you and sing you home to me. Now I am the nightingale who has traveled all this way. I still love you, Cam. Come back to me.”

  “No.”

  His answer was so clean, like the slice of the sharpest knife, that Lilith doubled over in pain. She gasped and rubbed her eyes—and when she drew her hands away…

  The cave was gone, the sunset gone. Cam was gone.

  Lilith was in a dismal shack, leaning against the wall. She recognized the unmade bed, the wooden bucket full of rancid water and days-old dirty dishes in the corner. Flies the size of hummingbirds swarmed streaks of lard on the plates. Everything was familiar, though she didn’t know why.

  “I told you to clean the dishes,” a woman’s voice said in a slow drawl. “Ain’t gon’ tell you again.”

  Somehow, Lilith knew that on the other side of this wall, a metal wire had been strung between two nails. She knew that she could play that wire, could make it sound like a fine instrument of many strings. She yearned to be outside with it, to feel the sting of copper on her calloused fingers.

  “I told you, you can’t play that dumb wire until you clean the dishes,” the woman said, picking up a knife. “I’ve had it with that wire.”

  “No, please!” Lilith shrieked as she raced outside after the woman.

  Lilith wasn’t fast enough, and the woman carelessly cut the wire in two. Lilith fell to her knees and wept.

  She closed her eyes again, and when she opened them, she was straddling a horse bounding across a frozen road in a hilly countryside. She grasped the reins, holding on for her life. Her breath fogged before her, and her skin blazed, and she knew that she was dying from a fever. She was a gypsy, sick and starving, dressed in rags, expected to sing love songs in exchange for crumbs.

  She blinked again, and again, and each time Lilith remembered another hellish experience. She was always a struggling musician, miserable and doomed. There was Opera Lilith, sleeping in an alley behind the theater. Orchestra Lilith, tormented by a cruel conductor. Troubadour Lilith, starving in a medieval city. In every existence, worse than her poverty, the loneliness, and the abuse was the rage darkening her heart. In every existence, she loathed the world she inhabited. She wanted revenge.

  Come back to me, she’d begged Cam.

  No.

  “Why!” She shouted the question she’d been too hopeless to ask every other day of her life until now. “Why?”

  “Because”—a deafening hiss filled her ears—“we made a deal.”

  “What deal?” she asked.

  Lilith opened her eyes. She was back onstage in Crossroads. The audience was motionless, terrified. It was as if time had stopped. The Four Horsemen were gone, and in their place Luc was standing in the middle of the stage.

  “Lilith!” she heard Cam scream. He rushed toward her, but Luc held him back and beckoned to Lilith to step toward him.

  She looked around at all of the frozen faces in the audience. “What’s happening?”

  “Here,” Luc said into the microphone. She stepped toward him, and he handed her a glass ball—a snow globe. “The missing piece.”

  Lilith held it up. Inside was a miniature cliff jutting out over a tumultuous ocean. A tiny figurine—a girl in a white wedding gown—stood at the cliff’s edge. The ground beneath Lilith swayed, and then she was the girl in white, inside the snow globe. She scrambled backward, away from the edge. She could smell the churning ocean, and beyond it she could see the glass encasing everything.

  “Take a good, hard look at your future, Lilith,” a voice behind her said.

  She turned to see Luc, reclining on a rock.

  “Without Cam,” he said, “what do you have to live for?”

  “Nothing.”

  He nodded at the water. “Then it’s time.”

  Luc looked the same as he did in Crossroads, but Lilith understood that he was more. The boy before her was the devil, and he’d made her an offer she’d been too lovesick to refuse.

  “I brought you to him,” he said, “and you did your best. But Cam didn’t want you, did he?”

  “No,” she said miserably.

  “You must hold up your end of our agreement.”

  “I’m scared,” she said. “What happens after—”

  “Leave that to me.”

  She gazed into the sea and knew she had no choice.

  She didn’t jump so much as lean forward—into the air, and then into the water. She let it take her. When the waves crashed over her, Lilith didn’t try to rise above them. What was there left to try for? Her heart was heavy, like an anvil, and she sank.

  Then she was at the bottom, in the filtered light, alone. Black water filled her nose and mouth, her stomach, her lungs.

  Her soul.

  Back onstage, Lilith faced Cam.

  She could sense Jean Rah, Luis, and the other performers from the battle, all gathered around them. The audience was dumbstruck, waiting to see what Lilith would do. But she could focus only on Cam. There was a wild look in his eyes.

  “What did you see?”

  “I saw…you.” Her voice trembled. “And…”

  It hit Lilith then that the rumors going around Trumbull about the girl Cam had driven to suicide had been true. “The girl who killed herself,” she said, her voice echoing across the Colosseum, “was me.”

  “Oh, Lilith,” Cam said, shutting his eyes.

  “I took my life because I loved you,” she said as the facts of her past began to resurface, “and you—”

  “I loved you, too,” he said. “I still—”

  “No. I begged you. I bared my soul to you. And you told me ‘no.’ ”

  Cam winced. “I was trying to spare you.”

  “But you couldn’t. I’d already made a deal.” She turned and pointed a single, shaking finger at Luc. “With him.”

  The skin around Cam’s eyes tightened. “I didn’t know—”

  “I was certain that if I could just find you, I could win you back.”

  Cam closed his eyes. “I was a fool.”

  “But I was wrong,” Lilith said. “What I just saw…those other lives I’ve lived…”

  Cam nodded. “Other Hells.”

  Other Hells? Lilith froze. Did he mean—

  This life, her life, was not actually a life at all?

  All the horrors she’d been forced to suffer, she had suffered because of Cam. Because long ago he had tricked her into falling in love with him. And she’d been stupid enough to fall into the same trap again.

  Suddenly, Lilith was so furious she could barely stand.

  “This whole time, I’ve been in Hell?” She stepped away from Cam, out of the spotlight and into darkness. “Because of you.”

  Five Minutes

  Cam stood onstage before Lilith, beneath the twirling lights from the disco ball, feeling the gaze of a thousand teenagers, and above them, the eyes of a million demons waiting in the sky.

  He reached toward Lilith. “There’s still hope.”

  She stepped away. “You’re the reason I’ve suffered so much. You’re the reason I’ve been so angry and sad. You’re the reason I hate my life.” Her eyes filled with tears.

  She was right. It was Cam’s fault. He’d rejected Lilith because he’d been too afraid to tell her the truth.

  “I’m so stupid. I thought you showing up in Crossroads was the best thing that ever happened to me, but it was the worst thing happening to me all over again.”

  “Please,” Cam begged. He held out his hands to her, but was shocked by what he saw: his fingers were gnarled, his nails thick and yellow. “You don’t understand—”

  “For the first time, I understand everything. I believed in our love, and you didn’t, but I was the one who paid the ultimate price.” She looked out over the walls of the Colosseum, where it opened up to the sky. Flames rose in the distance, licking the night. “Why did you come back? To taunt me? To delight in my suffering?” She flung her arms out, tears streaming down her face. “Are you satisfied?”

  “I came because I love you.” Cam’s voice trembled. “I thought you were dead. I never knew you were in Hell. As soon as I learned, I came for you.” His eyes began to burn. “I made a deal with Lucifer, and I’ve spent these past fifteen days falling in love with you all over again, hoping you could fall in love with me again, too.”

  “So that was the bet.” Lilith looked at Cam with disgust. “You haven’t changed at all. You’re just as selfish as ever.”

  “She’s right,” a voice boomed from everywhere as a hot wind swirled across the stage. Cam spun around to find Luc stripped of his youthful mortal guise. The true Lucifer stood in his place, chest heaving, eyes red with evil. With each breath, Lucifer’s body swelled; he grew larger and larger until he dwarfed the stage and eclipsed the moon.

  The audience screamed and tried to flee, only to find that every exit had been locked and bolted. Some students tried scaling the walls, others huddled together, crying. Every effort, Cam knew, was futile in the face of the devil.

  Lucifer’s fingers sharpened into razor claws the size of butchers’ knives. Reptilian black scales coated his body, and his features were jagged and devoid of mercy. He tipped his head back, closed his eyes, and released his tarnished green-gold wings.

  “Lucifer,” Lilith gasped in recognition.

  “Yes, Lilith,” Lucifer bellowed, his voice slithering into every crevice in Crossroads. “I am the maker of your misery.”

  The other student performers were long gone; they were now trembling somewhere in the audience, leaving the stage empty of everyone but Cam, Lilith, and Lucifer, and, he now realized, Jean and Luis. His two bandmates stood back, watching from the edge of the stage, their shoulders touching, their faces pale and horrified. Cam wished there was something he could do to console them, but he knew the horrors of the evening were only going to get worse.

  The stars pulsed and swelled as Lucifer’s legion of demons flew closer, growing discernible in the darkness, streaming in through the glassy firmament, swirling darkly, directly over Lilith.

  “Even now,” Lucifer said, “Cam lies to you, withholding his true nature from you. Behold!”

  The devil pointed at Cam and suddenly an insuppressible urge came over him. His shoulders felt as if they were engulfed in flames as Lucifer forced open Cam’s wings. They unfurled with a sound like tearing vinyl. For all eternity, Cam had known only the glorious beauty of his wings. Tonight, he looked back and gasped.

  They were hideous, leathery, limp, and charred, like the wings of the lowest demons in hell. He felt the bones inside his body twisting painfully, his skin pulling and tightening. He screamed, then looked at his hands—which had now turned into scaly claws.

  He touched his face, his chest, and knew his transformation was complete. Not even Lilith would be able to deny his monstrous appearance—

  And suddenly, Cam was glad of that. He would hide nothing from her, ever again.

  “Long ago,” he said, feeling tears in the corners of his eyes, “I was afraid you wouldn’t love me if you knew who I really was.”

  She studied his aging demon’s face, his decrepit body, his repulsive wings. “You never even gave me the chance to love the real you,” she said. “You didn’t trust that I might have accepted you.”

  “You’re right—”

  “I loved you, Cam. I wanted to marry you, and that meant every part of you, the good and the bad, the known and the unknown.”

  “I wanted to marry you, too. But I couldn’t do it in the temple as you wished—”

  “Screw the temple,” Lilith said. “Who cares about that?”

  “You did,” he said. “It mattered to you, but I dismissed it so that I wouldn’t have to tell you what I am. I tried to make it your fault, but I was the one who backed out of our marriage.”

  She stared at him, her expression strained with hurt.

  “I knew you could never forgive me,” he said, “so I ran away. I thought I had lost you for good. But then I found this second chance, and I came here to redeem myself. This time with you has shown me that my love for you is bigger than my fear. My love for you is bigger than anything I know.”

 
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