Page 113 of Tortured Soul
Why didn’t Arc push me out? Why did he trap mein, forcing me to see through his eyes? Forcing me to see how she would have looked likewith meif I didn’t reject her?
I pulled at my hair, wincing at the whispering echoes in my mind.
“She’ll only bring doom. You’re a Fallen, don’t sully yourself further by binding your tainted soul to one of them.”
But the voices were scared, and I wasn’t sure why.
“Shut up,” I groaned, smashing my hands on my face.
I wished they’d have stayed away longer. Maybe I should ask her to play her little mind trick again, as it seemed to have kept them silent for a couple ofpeacefulhours.
“Don’t fall for it. Cunning creatures. Stay away—Stay away—AWAY.”
I stood up hastily from my couch and went to the drawer of my nightstand, picking up the pre-rolled joint and a lighter with a shaky hand.
Walking back toward the couch, I cursed my weak mind for falling down this hole again. I promised myself yesterday that it would be the last time. That I wasn’t going to get hooked up again. That I could deal with the voices on my own now.
But as quiet as they were when she was touching me, they were even louder afterward.
I let myself fall on the spot I sat on a minute before and rolled the joint between my fingers, inspecting it.
If I had been a human, the plant Kai and Arc had given me to turn off the voices would have killed me a long time ago.
Datura.Devil’s weed.
Strangely enough, a lot of Fallen were using it to quiet their minds. Funny, when we thought about it, that we used something from Hell to chase away voices from the Heavens.
I lit it up and inhaled a long pull of the smoke before leaning my head against the backrest cushion with a long sigh.
My mind already started to feel lighter, the voices growing distant. I brought it to my lips again and turned my head to the side, toward the small leather book I picked up from the archives’ floor. The one Lola had been nearly crying on.
I’ve spent a lot of time up there, and never stumbled upon it. It wasn’t registered on the software either.
Every Divine and old Hellriser had at least once heard tales about theAstrals. Fallen stars that exterminated the Dinosaurs, believed by humans to be only some kind of big Asteroid.
There was barely any evidence of their existence, so I, like most Immortals, took their stories as some old human legends.
Those humans liked to believe in anything and create bullshit stories to make themselves feel better. Proof was, the second they stumbled upon a Divine, they made it their whole religion system. The moment their paths crossed a Hellriser, they used them to scare their population.
Truth was, there was neither Heaven nor Hell for humans. If they died? They went back to feed the Earth. Unless they sold their souls to Hell or, since the war, were found worthy of the Immortal cause and brought back to life as a turned angel. But again, Aymeric was the only one I’d ever met.
Astrals were nothing but legends and bedtime stories.
Right?
I picked up the book, keeping the joint between my lips without pulling on it, finally enjoying a clear mind.
Closing my eyes, I turned the pages, feeling for the ones that had startled mymateinto tears. She had been frightened, and I’ve never felt her emotions so out of control, even when Arc and I found her fighting off that demon in the streets. Worried, angry, helpless…But never terrified like she was earlier, holding this damn book.
My brows furrowed as I stopped on a page. The only page she had actually touched.
Opening my eyes, I looked at the content and my frown deepened.
“Dragons; Stars protecting humankind,” I whispered the words on the page.
Why had she been so frightened by this?
I looked at the description and the graphite sketches. It showed a large man with shoulder-length straight hair, scales on his forearms and around his eyes, a long, thin, leathery tail and wings behind him. Even in shades of black and white, his eyes looked strange. He had vertical slit pupils and the irises weren’t shaded to show any color. A little note said that they were known to have iridescent milky eyes, similar to the color of a white opal.
