When her demand went ignored, she cupped his chin and forced him to meet her gaze, those unfocused eyes changing from absent to present in the matter of a heartbeat. They captivated her, froze her, paralyzing in their intensity as they came alive and shook her to her very core with their vile truth, with what they showed her as she realized what she’d walked into.
This man, if he could still be called that, was not here to confess his love for her.
Teresa’s entire being screamed to get away as terror overtook her. Blood pounded in her ears, her throatconstricting. She shoved herself off Noah and bolted, her ears hissing from the adrenaline flooding her system. She had to run.God, she had to run.To get as far away as she could and call for help and not look back.
Or the monster was going to catch her.
Noah let Teresa go. Let her make it to the angel statue just before the stairs as the urge to toy with her dictated. Then he caught her; her worn-out flesh and bones were no match for his speed and strength.
He grabbed her by the wrist, yanked her back and took away her freedom, dragging her to the gazebo where he held her down sprawled on the oval table. She cried, she screamed, from fear or because he’d crushed her hand, he wasn’t sure. Nor cared, finding something fascinating in the way horror overtook her entire being and contorted her face. She clawed at him, begged, then prayed to God, promising Noah the world just before he slit her throat with the carving knife. The gurgling happened this time too, her body twitching in a futile attempt to save her as she choked on the blood and clung to the last moments of her life.
Before long, Teresa finally let go, her body turning limp beneath Noah. She stilled completely a few heartbeats later, her eyes frozen in that moment of utter terror, staring up at him without seeing. Empty, though enchanting, they hypnotized Noah as euphoria surged through him, uplifting and soul-cleansing in its momentary onslaught, in that respite before the devastation of Reign’s betrayal recaptured all of his senses.
Noah was shaking. Electricity crackled across his skin, tears burned his eyes. Squeezing the knife in a painful hold, he howled. The night swallowed his haunting cry, leaving behind just eerie silence as the moon finally made its entrance.Silver and not blood red, so not a hallucination this time. It gave everything an ethereal shimmer, including Noah’s bloody fingers that still grasped the knife’s handle, every leaf, every surface and every inch of concrete glowing in a sight so mesmerizing, Noah couldn’t tear his eyes away until clouds obscured the skies again.
Thoughts snapping back to the present, Noah shoved the body out of his way and straightened up. He wiped the blood off his face and scanned the surroundings for her discarded coat, needing it so he could get her phone.
A siren sounded, coming from within the building. Noah grumbled.Someone must’ve found the other three bodies already, threatening to ruin his plan.But he should still have time to finish what he’d started.
And then he didn’t, the chopping sound of helicopter blades reaching his ears just as he crouched by the fluffy coat. The wail of approaching police cars followed, telling him that whoever had stumbled upon the death in the Cardinal’s office had already contacted the authorities before sounding the alarm.
This was it then—Noah was standing at the end of his road for the last time ever. He knew it, he could feel it, the inevitability as solid as the knife he was still holding in his hand. Inescapable like a fate set in stone, it beckoned and urged, pushing him toward the edge of the building, just beyond the flowerbed with the red spider lilies. Noah didn’t resist it, didn’t fight it. He couldn’t have Reign andhe couldn’t kill Reign, which meant there was only one thing left to do.
With his eyes open this time, Noah looked up at the sky and breathed in, the crisp air and the scarf’s charred earth scent stinging his throat as they traveled to his lungs. The scarf that belonged and smelled like Reign. He shouldn’t have kept it, he shouldn’t have pretended he didn’t notice. He shouldn’t have lied to himself that he could move on and forget the demon when he couldn’t even get rid of this last reminder. Of this last tether chaining him to the man who’d shown him what it meant to live.
Noah’s hands shook as he pointed the knife at his heart, self-preservation kicking in as fear touched every part of him and robbed him of that absolute resolve which had been guiding him so far. He smiled and let the tears flow, taking one last deep breath as he shut his eyes and sobbed.
Then, with all the hate and love he had in him for Reign, he rammed the knife into his heart.
43
“It is not your time yet, child,” a beautiful voice whispered, engulfing all of Noah.
It was close and far away at the same time, an elusive phantom that robbed Noah of the pain and agony tearing him apart. That soothed him, caressed him. A hand enveloped his, firm but gentle, more tangible than the voice, but still not something he could truly feel, like it existed and didn’t in some strange half-state between the two. It reminded Noah of smoke, and when he opened his eyes, he found no hand, just a cloud of midnight-colored mist that swallowed him whole.
Like the voice and like the hand, it was pleasant, calming. His eyelids hung too heavy and his body felt too foreign as it continued to engulf him. It turned into a protective barrier around him and then it reached deep inside him too, an intrusion he welcomed even if it threatened to take away from him the eternal slumber he’d been rushing to.The end,which wasn’t the afterlife, nor Heaven or Hell, but rather, a place of absolute nothingness that was so compelling in its siren’s call he simply didn’t want to give it up even for that voice.
Because there he would no longer exist or feel.
Noah let the pleasant numbness of death eat him up, piece by piece. He didn’t fight it, didn’t oppose it, not until it reached his heart and found in it a craving far greater than the one of absolute finality.
Reign.
He wanted Reign. Even at death’s doorstep. Craved him, yearned him, needed him like the Earth needed the Sun, like the stars needed the sky so they wouldn’t fall and annihilate the entire world. Even now, even when he’d made his peace, he couldn’t give up Reign. He couldn’t break free from that soul-deep desire, didn’t want to, just like he hadn’t allowed himself to ever forget that calming scent of charred soil.
Reign.
Noah roared without a voice, screamed until his throat couldn’t take it anymore. He fought, clawed at the nothingness like Teresa had clawed at him, feeding onto the hurt and anger and need for vengeance. Toward Reign… or maybe toward the world itself. It didn’t matter, not in this very moment when his sole focus was on not losing this war within him that the voice had forced him to wage. One side wanted to cease to exist, to be erased and to become part of that nothingness he’d tasted, but the other one wasn’t ready to let go, not yet and despite Noah’s compelling conclusion of the meaningless of his life. This second part, it didn’t want to yield while Reign still remained alive and wasn’t Noah’s.
Noah howled again in this world of no sound, flailing limbs he didn’t feel. He had to get out of here. He needed to leave and make it back to the roof garden with the red lilies and the silver moon so he could finish what he’d started.Even if he was dead, even if it was too late. His soul demandedit, enforcing that imperative upon his entire being, an instinctual, fundamental need he could not defy.
Like a beast on a rampage, Noah fought with the mist and the sleepiness and the end. Pain zapped through him, touching every vertebra of his spine, igniting his nerves on fire as they came back to life one by one, as the black smoke dispersed and revealed a room. Shelves with books and strange objects lined the walls, while an obsidian throne stood proudly in the center. In front of it, a desk made of bone housed a severed head in a bell jar. The mist converged around the trophy, caressed it, wentthroughthe glass to touch the head, to rake through the blond curls hanging over the man’s closed eyes.
As Noah approached, the mist stirred, transforming from its smoky form to a man with snow-white hair. He left Noah breathless, his beauty otherworldly just like his midnight gaze which carried a fragment of the Sun in it. He was sitting on the throne, his expression unreadable though not hostile, and he was looking at Noah as if he could actually see him.
A rush of awe raised Noah’s hackles as their gazes clashed and he recognized the man.
Lucifer.
