Cinder Read online

  I unenthusiastically nod. “Yes, please… I never meant to kill him and I don’t… I don’t want to be responsible for that.” I slide off his back and plant my feet back onto the ground, releasing a breath as Cameron turns to face me.

  “And who says I have the ability to do that?” he questions. His voice comes off a little shaky and high-pitched, like he’s gotten really nervous, which is strange. The Cameron I know is cocky and arrogant all the damn time. I must have struck a nerve or something. “Who says that I can raise the dead?” His forced laughter rings around us.

  “Don’t play dumb with me, Cameron.” I poke him in his solid chest with my finger, pretending to be more confident than I really am. “I know you can—you just said you could.”

  “No, I said I could fix this,” he states condescendingly, attempting to mess with my head. He deliberates something for a moment and then his mouth curves upward into a sly grin. “What if I said I could do it?” He strolls around me at nearly an inhumane speed, swishing his cape, ending up behind me and leaning right over my shoulder. “What would you give me to use this gift?” His voice touches my ear.

  “What do you want?” I frown at the thought that I’m actually considering this.

  “I think you already know,” he whispers, placing a kiss against my cheek and it sends a chill up my spine. . “I want you to kiss me.”

  My muscles ravel and I feel like fleeing, but I force myself to stand motionless. “And what if I say no?”

  “More specific than this.” His fingers roam to my cheek and caress it. I cringe, vomit burning at the back of my throat as a shiver coils through my body. I don’t know what to do. I’m conflicted. Lost. Probably because he’s messing with my head and not letting me feel my true emotions.

  I open my mouth to tell him to stop touching me but the words drift from my lips as he leans back and his gaze wanders to my lips. “Say yes. That you’ll kiss me,” he whispers.. “Say yes, and I’ll bring him back to life. You won’t have to have his blood on your hands.”

  I want to scream no! That he is probably the one who brought me here to begin with and that he probably made me do this only so I would owe him. That nothing is worth something that involves me owing him, yet as I stare down at the guy’s lifeless body, thinking about his family and friends and how much it’ll hurt when they find out he’s gone, I know that I’ll do anything to spare them the pain I know all too well.

  “Fine,” I choke. “Bring him back to life and I’ll kiss you.”

  He lets out a growl before his fingers leave my cheek. “I’m slightly disappointed you gave in so easily.” He backs away from me and hunches over the body. “I thought you’d be a little more difficult to break down.” He glances at me as I press my hand to my aching chest, realizing what I’ve done.

  It feels like I’ve handed my soul over to him on a silver platter. My thoughts drift back to the poem I wrote on my wall this morning as I try to figure out my true feelings about this situation.

  Light and darkness

  Death and life

  Wrong and right

  Need and want

  So far apart.

  Yet so closely connected.

  I blink my focus back to Cameron, sinking to my knees on the asphalt as he lifts up his cape, shielding my view from whatever he’s doing. I hear the sound of wind, although I can’t feel it. I can hear my heart beating, but again, I can’t feel it. Then I feel and hear nothing except silence.

  Moments later, Cameron lowers his cape back down and steps back as the guy pushes to his feet, bloody, with his shirt torn, but the slash in his chest is mended and he’s breathing. As he turns around towards me, the guy looks straight through me. It makes me wonder if he’s under some sort of Reaper possession.

  “What were you going to say about my father?” I ask, stepping towards him. “Right before I…” I trail off as he starts to turn towards the alleyway, ready to leave. But I lunge forward and snag the sleeve of his shirt. “You said you know where he is.”

  The guy shakes his head without looking at me. “I know nothing.”

  I clutch onto his shirt. “Yes, you do. Please, just tell me.”

  He shakes his head again, so I jerk on his arm, acting more violent than I normally do. “Just tell me,” I growl, enraged.

  Arms abruptly slip around my waist and draw me back. My fingers slip from the guy’s sleeve and I let out a growl, fighting against Cameron—kicking, screaming, shouting—solely focused on the fact that he’s keeping me away from someone who may know something about my father.

  “Let me go, Cameron!” I cry, writhing my body.

  He doesn’t say a word as he holds me back, acting as though my kicking and screaming is nothing to him. Then, without saying anything, the guy rounds the corner of the building and disappears into the night, taking the information about my father with him.

  Cameron’s grip on me loosens, and I instantly spin around to shove him back. “What did you do to him?” I ask. “He acted like he didn’t even know what I was talking about… but I heard him say it before he died; he knew something about my dad.” I turn to chase the guy down. “And I’m going to find out what.”

  Cameron captures my arm, stopping me again. “Ember, relax. He doesn’t know anything about your father. I just put that in his head and made him say it.”

  My heart withers as I slowly turn to face him. “Why would you do that? Just to mess with my head?”

  His expression is stoic as he continues to hold onto my arm. “Who said I was messing with you? Maybe I know something about your father.”

  I want to shove him back and run; to get away from him because he has to be lying. Deep down, though—in the bottom of my soul—I wish that he wasn’t and that’s why I stay. “Do you know something?”

  He crosses his arms. “I’m not going to tell you until you pay me back for bringing back that guy.”

  I shake my head. “I know I should be saying thank you, but the kiss is more than enough.” I force myself to look up at him.

  A smile creeps up on his face as he extends his hand to me. Begrudgingly, I slip my fingers through his. Then he jerks me against his body, our chests colliding.

  “You can pretend you don’t want to do this,” he says, “but we both know you do.”

  I shake my head, unable to speak. “Let’s just get this over with.”

  He lets out a low chuckle as he draws a line across my bottom lip with his fingertip. “Close your eyes.”

  Forcing air into my lungs, I obey, feeling the power he has over me. I hold my breath when I feel him shift and then his lips are hovering over mine. He takes my hands and places them on top of his chest where his heart is; that is, if he has a heart.

  “Take it,” he whispers. “Take the life inside of me.”

  My eyes snap open and I try to retreat, but he holds me securely in place. “What? No way.” I shake my head swiftly. “You said you wanted a kiss.”

  “It’s almost like a kiss,” he says, his voice gravelly as he presses on my lower back, forcing me to stay close to him. “Just a little extra.”

  “I don’t care… I said a kiss…” I’m not even sure why I’m arguing because both seem just as bad. “Besides, you’re already dead. You don’t even have life inside you.”

  “If you really believe that, then why are you so afraid?”

  “I…” I trail off, feeling a sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach, like I just walked into a trap. Was any of this real? The club? The guy I stabbed? None of it really happen, did it?

  “Feel it,” Cameron commands, ignoring me as he lowers his forehead against mine. “Take my life from me, princess. I’m asking you to.”

  “Why?” I manage to say, but it’s hard to speak because I feel the spark of life within him—breathing, beating, fully alive and awake—waiting for me to take it away, blow it out and make it mine. “Why do you want me to do this?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he says softly, his voice bri
mming with elation. “What does matter is that you said you would and that deep down, in that place you won’t admit exists, you know you want to feel it… the taste of a life from another.”

  “No…” I say, but it’s a lie because, now that he’s said it, I want to taste it. I feel myself falling towards him, like my body is sinking into his, but I’m not the one moving. He is. Sinking into me, his life spilling into my veins, like smoldering flames that simmer out as soon as they touch me…

  “No…” I try to pull away, but it’s too late. His life engulfs me, hot and blazing, burning and breathing.

  Moments later, the fire starts to fizzle and becomes heavy and thick, like tar running through my veins. I can taste the foulness of it, but at the same time—within the distorted place I don’t want to admit exists, the one created by the Reaper blood inside me—I want it.

  I want more.

  When I push my hands forward, crushing them against Cameron’s chest, he lets out a painful yet blissful moan as his head slants back and more life and sparks burst into me until his life is consuming every inch of my body. Heavy and weightless at the same time—and somewhere between it all—I get lost. I float away into the darkness. And in the midst of it, I swear I feel feathers touching me, but before I can figure out why, I collapse to the ground and drift off… somewhere…

  You’ll understand soon. What I want.

  I try to make sense of the voice, but moments later, drift off into the blackness with feathers surrounding me. Then for the briefest moment, it feels like they’re falling off me.

  But I know that can’t be right.

  Chapter 3

  I wake up screaming with my lungs heaving, terrified of what I’ve just done. Murder. Death. Reapers. Evil. All of it connects with me and I half expect to burst into flames as I bolt upright. Yet, as my heart settles—as I realize where I am—I start to relax. I’m not in the alleyway, but in my bed, surrounded by black and red walls that are sketched with mythical drawings and depressing poetry. A thin, black curtain hangs across the closet doorway that’s decorated with photos of dead poets and authors along with a poem Cameron wrote a few weeks ago.

  “It was just a dream.” I press my hand to my chest, relief washing over me until I realize the full extent of what this means. That I didn’t kill someone and take some of Cameron’s life, that Cameron didn’t tell me he knows something about my father. It was just a dream and I’m back to square one where I have nothing more than emptiness to accumulate my life.

  I tell myself to calm down as I keep my eyes on the door, wondering if my brother, Ian, heard me scream when I woke up. Even if he did—even if he is here—I doubt he’ll check in on me. That’s how things have been ever since I found Ian passed out in his bed with that photo of Alyssa, his deceased girlfriend, with the words, Death made me do it, Alyssa, and I’m sorry. But now I have to move on to the next angel written on it. I asked him about it the next day and he denied the photo ever existed along with the painting in the attic of Raven lying in the snow, wearing a cloak and holding an hourglass. Somehow, it disappeared and there’s no evidence that any of these things existed. For all I know, everything I’ve seen is nothing more than an illusion created by the Reapers.

  Then there’s my best friend, Raven, who I wouldn’t put it passed to be part of the murders also, at least her possessed, alter ego side. She’s actually been ignoring me, which I both like and hate because she’s evil at the moment, yet I miss my friend. We pass by each other in the school hallways like ghosts, neither acknowledging that we see each other. It makes me want to find that damn book that was stolen so I can translate what it said on those pages about freeing pure souls.

  I lie quietly in my bed for a while, the stillness absorbing into my skin as the loneliness weighs me down. The sun is sparkling through my window, the sky a clear blue and there’s a bird chirping from the branches. Thankfully, it’s not a raven; otherwise, I’d think it was Cameron.

  I decide what to do next for the day because if I don’t find something to keep me distracted, the hours are going to drag. I could write maybe, but I’m worried what might come out of me; my darkest desires I don’t want to admit, how I briefly loved the taste of Cameron’s life, the darkness living inside him. Even though it was just a dream, it frightens me.

  Sighing, I reach for one of my textbooks on the nightstand beside my bed, choosing to catch up on schoolwork since it’s the one thing I have left in my life that’s not centered by death, angels and Reapers. But as my fingers grasp the edge of the book, I catch sight of my arm and jerk my hand back.

  Lines vine up and down my skin and wind around my wrist in black ink, like a tattoo. My thoughts flash back to my dream and I can taste the feeling of Cameron’s life again, burning at the tip of my tongue.

  “No, it was a dream,” I whisper in horror as I grip my forearm, rotating my arm around to examine it. “It didn’t really happen… it couldn’t have.”

  I don’t think you really believe that; do you, princess? The voice in my head appears again. This time it’s way clearer and louder. It’s now to the point where I recognize it perfectly.

  “Dammit.” I frown. “This can’t be happening… it had to be a dream… there’s no way you can really be inside my head.”

  Nope, it’s really happening. I’m in your thoughts now, even more so than last night when I compelled you to go to that club, so I could trick you into drinking my life, he says with amusement in his tone. Besides, deep down, you wanted to give in to me. Just like when you took my life… I bet you loved it.

  I don’t react because it will give him a sense of satisfaction that I don’t want him to have. “It could still be a dream,” I say in denial. “Maybe that’s all it is. Maybe I’m really still asleep, maybe you and I and my room and this conversation aren’t really happening. Or maybe the Anamotti are making me think this is happening.”

  You know it’s real, he says. You know you went there last night just like you know the black lines on your arms are from you devouring my life, tasting it and loving it.

  I wince at the partial truth of his accusation. “Leave me alone, Cameron. I don’t want you here. And you can’t stay here if I don’t want you to.”

  Things don’t work like that anymore, he says. Especially after you took some of my life.

  Shit. I knew there was a stipulation; a reason why he wanted me to do that.

  Aggravated, I throw the blankets off my body and climb out of bed, trudging towards the dresser.

  Nice pajamas, he jokes.

  As I glance down at my black shorts and thin purple tank top, he laughs at me and I shake my head and yank a dresser drawer open.

  “About what you said last night; do you really know something about my father or was that just one of your games?”

  I can’t tell you that yet.

  I rummage through the drawer for a clean shirt and a pair of jeans. “Please, Cameron, this is important to me.” I hate the fact that it seems like I’m begging.

  There’s a long pause and I hold my breath, waiting for his answer, thinking for a moment that he might actually give one to me.

  But then he says, I might tell you in time, but not right now. In fact, you’re not ready right now. Plus, I have to get what I want first; you have to give in before I give up my secrets.

  Fury ignites inside me as I snatch up a shirt, jeans, and a pair of fingerless gloves to hide the lines on my arms before slamming the drawer shut, then I start for the closet. As I stomp towards it, I catch sight of the poem Cameron wrote on the wall weeks ago. It reminds me what his mission is in all of this.

  In separate fields of black feathers, the birds fly.

  Four wings, two hearts, but only one soul.

  They connect in the middle, though are separated by a thin line of ash.

  It’s what brings them together, yet rips their feathers apart.

  They can never truly be together as light and dark.

  Unless one makes the ultima
te sacrifice.

  Blows out their candle, and joins the other in the dark.

  It’s the poem that I read on Cameron’s wall, but three extra lines have been added.

  Or if the one dares to fly across the line and steal the other’s light

  To force them to cross over the line and join the darkness of life.

  I’m not gone, princess. I will come back for you until you give in.

  —Cameron

  “You know, I’m never going to give in to you,” I tell him, drawing the closet curtain back as I duck inside. “I’m going to figure this out, so you might as well just leave my mind alone.”

  You really think you will? He questions. Because I think you’re more lost now than you were a few days ago. I think with each day you grow weaker, more desperate. Lonelier. More willing to stand here and listen to me talk to you inside your head because I’m the only one you have to talk to anymore.