The Immortal Bond (The Immortal Mark Book 3) Read online

  They all eagerly agree. Though too skinny, the kids look much better having taken a shower. The dark T-shirts hide some of the bony frames that look malnourished and sad. In all, we have seven girls and five boys, ranging from ten to fifteen years old. Ashlee has been here the longest, which means she’s the wisest of the group, but she’s also seen eleven other kids die and be replaced. She says she was adopted just before Christmas, which means she’s been a lifeblood for around seven months. Theo and the guys think that because she’s so young, she’ll probably survive two years with a bracelet, so that’s good news. It means she hasn’t been drained of too much of her life force yet.

  The rest of them are in good shape, too. As soon as I murder Lady Em, they’ll be free. And then, if they want to stay with me and Theo, I will promise to take care of them no matter what. We’ll build our own mansion and we’ll take care of them. My eyes sting with tears as I think about the love and care and food I’ll make sure they have. They’ll all get the best clothes and the trendy cell phones and they won’t be treated like scum by the other kids in school. This will be a good thing. Even if Theo stays an immortal while I become mortal again without my bracelet, at least I’ll have the kids to keep me occupied until I grow old. Maybe after they grow up, I’ll become a foster parent, and I can try to rescue as many kids as possible from the system. That can help me cope with losing Theo. Although it probably won’t help much.

  Bethany arrives, her eyes wide as she takes in our visitors. I take it Nia and Olivia didn’t rush off and tell her about the kids after Theo told them to go back to their rooms. Good. I hope they feel stupid that their little plan to rat us out didn’t work.

  “Hi Bethany,” I say cheerfully, waving her over. “We have some houseguests.”

  I know she sees their bracelets because it’s impossible not to notice the shining beautiful jewelry on the wrists of kids wearing plain clothes, so I say, “They’re from another clan and need a place to stay. I was hoping you could work your magic and give us all a tour of the mansion.”

  She brightens. “Of course! That would be fun!”

  Although Riley and I know the mansion better than even Bethany does by now, I like the way she gives the tour. She’s sweet with the kids and she shows them all the exciting parts first, like the pantry full of food and the swimming pool and movie theater room. The kids slowly come out of their shell as we go from room to room, and when a pair of girls ask if we have any Disney movies, they don’t want to leave the theater until I promise them we’ll come back to watch a movie after the tour.

  Since Theo and the guys are now huddled together in one of their rooms discussing plans of taking down Lady Em, Riley and I take care of the kids. When we get to the upstairs, Bethany and I go into the five empty bedrooms on the girl’s end of the hall. There are no more empty rooms on the guy’s side, so that means the kids have to share rooms.

  When I start asking the kids who they’d like to share a room with, I’m surprised to see them clam up and look at each other nervously. “What’s wrong?” I ask. “We could put the older kids together in a couple of rooms, and the younger kids can be together in another room. Does that sound good?”

  Ashlee and another fifteen year old boy named Jaden look at each other. She leans over and whispers into his ear and he nods. “We’d like to stay together, if that’s okay.”

  I look at Riley. She seems to catch on before I do. “It’s safer that way,” she says, leaning down to put her hands on her knees as she looks at the kids. She winks at them. “I totally get it. How about this: You guys look in each of these five rooms and then pick your favorite. Then we’ll bring a bunch of mattresses in and you can all have a big sleep over! Sound fun?”

  They cheer and rush off to look through the five open doors. Most of the bedrooms are set up like mine and Riley’s, though some of them have better views of the lake because of where they’re located.

  “They’ll probably want their own rooms eventually,” Riley says as we watch the kids run from one room to the next. Jaden holds onto a girl who can’t walk well, helping her get around. “They just feel safer together right now.”

  “Yeah, that makes sense,” I say with a sigh. I hope these kids haven’t been so emotionally scarred that they’ll never be able to have a happy life again. My heart breaks for them, but I vow to do all I can to make them happy again.

  After we’ve made good on our promise to drag all the mattresses over, Malina comes up and tells us she could have had the help do that instead. She gets another maid and they put clean sheets on the mattresses and make sure there’s enough places to sleep for each kid in the room they’ve chosen, which is right across the hallway from Riley’s room.

  As promised, we all go back to the movie theater room and put on Frozen for the kids to watch. I get them all popcorn and candy even though Malina gives me a look and says it’ll ruin their appetite for dinner, which is spaghetti and meatballs because Chef says the kids will love it. I don’t care. Let them spoil their appetite with candy. They deserve it.

  ***

  When the credits appear on my TV screen, I look down at my phone.

  Me: Still in the meeting?

  Theo: Not much longer, love.

  It’s ten thirty at night and I’ve just finished watching The Wedding Planner with Jennifer Lopez. Riley is on the floor over by the window in my bedroom, working on the computer translation. There’s a half-eaten pint of ice cream next to her. My ice cream is fully eaten, the empty carton on my nightstand.

  After watching the movie, the kids scarfed down the spaghetti and meatballs as if they hadn’t just eaten a ton of candy. The whole house came together for the meal—the guys, Nia, Olivia, Bethany, and me and Riley. It was fun, to say the least. We ate at the large dining table, with Theo at one end and Henry at the other. Afterward, the kids went to their room and all promptly fell asleep. I’ve checked on them three times.

  Each time I get up, Riley sighs and rolls her eyes and tells me I’m being over protective. The kids know where my door is and they’ve been told to come get me if they need anything. Still, I can’t help but check on them. Each time I have though, they’ve all been passed out, sleeping blissfully on clean sheets in a clean room.

  The same thing happens now, as I poke my head into their door for the fourth time tonight. Everyone is asleep. I smile and gently close the door, then go back to my room.

  Riley is pacing the floor. I lift an eyebrow as I go back to my place on the bed.

  “What’s going on with you?”

  She takes a deep breath, stops her pacing right in front of my bed and lets it out slowly, her lips forming an O shape. She wrings out her hands. “It’s done.”

  “What’s done?”

  “The book,” she says, sitting on the foot of my bed. “The whole book. It’s done. I translated it from Greek to English.”

  I sit up straighter. “And?”

  While her short hair is a mess around her face, her face is expressionless. “It doesn’t say a word about removing a lifeblood bracelet.”

  I groan and toss my head back. “Dammit.”

  “There was one thing,” she says, pinching the bridge of her nose. “It didn’t really make sense though, but it had a word that meant perpetual, which took me forever to translate. It was used like, perpetual lifeblood.”

  “What does that mean?” I say.

  She shrugs. “It had a drawing—let me get it.”

  She grabs the book and opens it to a bookmarked page. The drawing is more like a scribble, and it’s hard to decipher what it’s even supposed to be. “Perpetual lifeblood…” she says, pointing to the Greek words at the bottom. “It looks like two broken stones to me. Right? Like if you have two stones and break them then your two lifebloods might be…perpetual?” she says the last word like she’s confused. She screws up her face and shakes her head. “Nah. It doesn’t make sense. Anyhow, it doesn’t tell us how to take off the bracelet, just how to stay perpetually a life
blood and that doesn’t help.”

  I study the page, the words all foreign to me. I’m about to ask for the English version she translated so I can read it, but I know it’s no use. Not only are the translated sentences weird and hard to understand, but the whole book is about being immortal, not about freeing your lifebloods. It makes sense that our answer wouldn’t be in here, but still—it hurts like a slap in the face to know that the book I’ve put so much faith in has let us down.

  “I’m sorry,” Riley says with a sigh. “Have you put any more thought into becoming an immortal?”

  I shoot her a look. “Even if I got over the fact that we have to take people’s lives to be immortal, how—besides murder—would we get our own set of immortality stones?”

  Riley flinches. “I guess I hadn’t thought of that. I guess if Dover is happy we brought back the stolen stones, maybe they’ll…”

  “They’re not going to give us two of them,” I say, unable to hold back the frustration in my voice. “They’re very picky about who they allow to become immortal and two teenaged girls are the last people they’d consider.”

  She turns around and then falls to her back on my bed, tucking her hands under her head while she stares out the window. “I guess it as just wishful thinking on my part. I mean, I’m happy to go back to a normal human who ages and dies, but I can’t stop daydreaming about wanting to be an immortal. How amazing life could be.”

  Her words hit me hard because I’ve been thinking about it, too. I try not to, and I try to focus on the here and now. I tell myself I can’t in good conscience take someone else’s life to let myself live, but it doesn’t stop me from daydreaming about an eternity with Theo.

  There’s a knock on my door and we both sit up. “Come in!” I call out, assuming it’s Theo.

  It is Theo, but he has Henry with him. I sit up straighter, then hop off the bed entirely. It’s very awkward having him in my bedroom. “What’s going on?” I ask.

  Henry dips his head toward me in a hello. “We have discussed it. We want to tell Nia, Olivia, and Bethany the truth about the bracelets.”

  “Wow.” Riley’s surprise mirrors my own.

  “But we probably can’t save them,” I say, feeling like shit but knowing Dover might give me and Riley our lives back, but not them. “What if they freak out?”

  “It’s a risk we have to take. I can’t continue like this,” he says, his lips pressing together. “We have all agreed. We want them to know.”

  I open my mouth to comfort him, but there’s really nothing I could say to make this easier. “Good luck.”

  Chapter 24

  The house is eerily quiet, considering what’s going on outside of this room. After Henry and the guys decided to tell the secret of immortality and lifebloods to the other girls, Theo and I stayed back. I thought for sure Theo would go with them, but he said the girls are their lifebloods, not his. It was their problem and their call with what they wanted to do. I’m guessing the real reason he didn’t want to be there was because it will be insanely awkward and even more sad. Finding out your life is ending soon is a hard pill to swallow.

  Riley went back to her room a while ago, taking the laptop with her. She claimed she was exhausted and wanted to get some sleep, but if I know her at all, she’s probably up right now, pouring over the translation trying to find something she missed. That book has become her sole reason for existing lately. When we’re not doing something, she’s working on it. I’m surprised she’s not completely fluent in Greek now.

  For now, it’s nearly midnight and Theo and I are lying in my bed on top of the blankets. There’s some stupid reality TV show on, but I don’t bother changing the channel because I’m not really paying attention to it anyhow. My eyes are on the screen, but my mind is far away. So many things have happened in the last few days, and they all seem to be a bunch of new problems, not answers to the old ones.

  Theo runs a hand down my hair and I tuck in closer, cuddling up against his chest. His body seems like it was made exactly for mine. The way we fit together, whether standing or lying down or even when I’m sitting on his lap—it’s like he’s been fashioned from a mold where I’m the other half.

  “I need a shower,” he says with a heavy sigh while he keeps stroking my hair. “This has been a long day.”

  “Don’t leave,” I say, grabbing his shirt. “Just fall asleep dirty with me.”

  He chuckles. “I feel nasty though. Let’s both shower.”

  He takes my chin and tilts my head up so we can kiss. I close my eyes, reveling in the feeling of his lips on mine, even if it only lasts for a quick moment. In those few seconds, everything is perfect. Once I’m back to reality, the weight of the world crushes back on top of me.

  I sit up on my elbow. “Okay,” I say, glancing toward the bathroom and gauging how much energy I have for this. “A quick shower.”

  The water is hot and steamy and it feels great on my back. I tip my head backward, letting it wash over me. Theo’s hands massage shampoo into my scalp and it feels amazing. I let him wash my hair, and then he slides the soap down my back. The first time we showered it was sexual, full of desire. Now, maybe we’re both exhausted, or life is too crazy, but Theo runs his hands over me with a new type of love and affection. Neither one of us are feeling up to doing anything more tonight, but being together and sharing our time with each other feels like the greatest stress relief ever.

  When we’re both clean and dried off, I slip into a big T-shirt and crawl into bed next to Theo. He smells amazing, a mix of my green apple body wash and his deodorant. I kiss his neck, breathing him in, and then cuddle up close, pulling the sheets over my shoulder. With his arm wrapped around me and the sound of his steady heartbeat while I lay on his chest, I feel perfect for the first time in days.

  But I’m not tired anymore.

  “Why can’t I sleep?” I say with a groan. “I was exhausted a few minutes ago.”

  “I can’t seem to turn my brain off,” Theo says. “This was an intense day.”

  “I’m happy we have the kids,” I tell him. “They’re the craziest thing that happened today, but that’s not what’s bothering me, really. They’re easy to take care of and we have Malina helping us. What I can’t stop thinking about is what comes next.”

  “Same here, love.” Theo kisses the top of my head. “Damien’s people haven’t found a trace of Lady Em in Europe. They couldn’t even find her leaving the airport once she arrived. She’s clever and she’s staying hidden.”

  “She has to turn up at some point,” I say. “She wouldn’t abandon her stones at her California house. And as soon as she gets there, I’ll be waiting.”

  “You don’t have to be the one to kill her, you know.”

  Theo’s hand gently draws circles on my back, and it’s the funniest thing because we’re laying here talking about murder and he’s stroking my back with love an tenderness. I laugh. “Oh, yes I do. I can’t wait to kill her.”

  “It’ll be dangerous, love. We should take her out from far away. Maybe get a sniper rifle.”

  “Screw that. I want to see her die. I want it to be at my hands.”

  His lips slide into a crooked grin. “Okay, that was kind of sexy, and that’s also weird that I feel that way.”

  I laugh and some of my anger melts away. “Baby, I’ll kill our enemies for the rest of our lives.”

  “Mmm, talk dirty to me,” he says, chuckling. “Seriously though…” Theo pauses to kiss me, and I can see the hesitation in his eyes. “This is dangerous. We don’t know how it’ll play out, but we both agree she should die to save those children and as revenge for all the innocent people she’s killed. Not to mention, if we don’t kill her then Dover will. But whatever happens, we have to be smart about it. I can’t lose you in the process.”

  “I know,” I say, trying to hide my annoyance. “I’ll be safe. I won’t go charging head first into killing her or anything. It’s just—she tried to kill you. That really pisses
me off.”

  Theo’s phone rings and he makes this annoyed expression. I nudge him. “You should answer it.”

  He leans over and looks at this phone on the nightstand. “It’s Kyle,” he says, answering it. “Hey man. Yeah, I’m awake. What’s up?”

  I watch Theo while he’s on the phone, but I can’t hear what Kyle’s saying. After a few seconds, Theo puts him on speakerphone. “Say it again. Cara is listening.”

  “Hi Cara,” Kyle says, his voice filling the quiet of my bedroom. “So…tonight was interesting. They told Nia, Olivia, and Bethany about the stones and…well, their first question was why weren’t you and Riley there. When they found out you two knew about it and they didn’t, they were more pissed about being kept in the dark than the fact that immortality exists and they were being used as human batteries.”

  “These girls have some weird priorities,” I say sarcastically. “What else happened?”

  “Well…like I was telling Theo just now, Henry thinks we can secure the ownership of the mansion after Lady Em is gone. They want to ask the other clans to recognize us as our own clan and then we just keep this place as our home base.”

  “That’s a good idea,” I say, looking up at Theo. I can’t read his expression though, so I don’t know what he thinks. I know he wants to go back to Embrook, but I want to stay here. “And the girls?” I ask.

  “After their initial shock, they were crying and stuff. I felt bad and told them that you’re working on finding a way to remove the stones safely and we told them the guys are all on board with getting terminally ill lifebloods like Theo does. So… now they’re all happy thinking they’ll find a way out of the bracelets.”

  Theo sighs. My chest aches because yes, I am trying to save us all, but with Damien’s constant negativity, and how little I actually know about the Dover clan, my hope that this will work out is dwindling.

  “I guess it’s better for them to stay hopeful,” I say. I remember all the emotions I went through when I discovered my status as a lifeblood. I’m still going through these feelings on a daily basis, and they’re never good. It’s just the start for the other girls. I want to call Bethany and hug her and tell her it’ll be okay. I’m not even friends with the other two girls, but I kind of want to hug them, too.