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“Don’t flatter yourself.” Cade balks, makes a face of outraged distaste. “Trust me when I say I couldn’t bear the sight of it. The very thought of your tender moment makes me ill. Though make no mistake.” His face hardens, turning his eyes to mere slits. “I’m always aware. I know everything about you, brother. It’d be smart of you to never
forget that.”
“You’re crazy!” Dace roars, oblivious to the continuous trail of blood that streams to his wrist, over his fingers, before mixing with the dirt at his feet. “You’re a freak!”
He lunges again, but Cade shakes his head and shoves his palm square in the middle of Dace’s chest. Holding him off with only one hand in a show of unexpected brute strength that sets me on edge. With a final drag of his cigarette, he flicks it to his feet and gives Dace a backward shove, saying, “No, brother, you’re wrong. I’m well beyond labels. I transcend anything your small mind can conceive. I’m simply superior—to you and everyone else—as I’ve already explained.”
Dace stares hard at his brother, as Coyote stares hard at him, ready to attack at the first sign from Cade.
“Though that’s not to say I’m not glad you enjoyed your little lovefest.” Cade grins in a way that comes off looking creepy, obscene. “In my own way, I guess you could say I enjoyed it too. There’s just so much positivity and love in the air it’s as though I’m completely transformed!”
His eyes level on mine. Those icy-blue irises banded by gold appearing nearly identical to his twin’s. Though unlike Dace’s kaleidoscope gaze that reflects everything in its vicinity—Cade’s eyes are empty. Nonreflective. A fathomless abyss absorbing the essence of all that it sees.
And now they’re absorbing me.
Tugging on my soul.
Siphoning my energy.
Determined to drain me, while hinting at something far too horrible to speak.
His gaze deepens, features lifting in triumph, as he says, “Oh yes, Santos, I’m afraid it’s all true. While you think you can refuse to work with me—while you think you can refuse the generous offer I’ve made you—what you fail to realize is that you’ve been working for me all along. Since well before you arrived in Enchantment. Dace and I are two halves of a whole. Connected. Intertwined. Which means the love you feel for him—in thought, deed, even in your dreams—it all serves to strengthen me. I’m the beneficiary of every kind and loving emotion you have toward each other. Same goes for the sexy thoughts too.”
The pendulum!
Paloma was right. They’re connected so deeply, the pendulum sees them as one. My subconscious mind already accepting the horrible truth my heart fought to refuse.
“There’s no avoiding it,” Cade taunts. “No way to undo what’s already done. You two are destined. Fated. And now, the prophecy has begun. In other words”—his gaze slants to his brother—“the snowball’s headed for hell and there’s no way to stop it.”
Dace’s features sharpen with rage. Despite his wounded arm, despite all he just learned, he refuses to fold. Refuses to be cowed by his freak of a brother. “I always knew you were crazy—but now you’ve reached a whole new level,” he says. “You stay away from us. And don’t even think about going near Daire!”
He reaches for me with his good arm, tries to pull me away, but I’m frozen in place. Sickened by everything Cade just revealed, but even more disturbed by the words that repeat in my head:
Thanks to a little smoke and mirrors on my part, a little tweak in your perception …
Reminded of what Paloma told me about El Coyote’s ability to change people’s perception. Remembering how Cade and Leandro toyed with mine during my first visit to the Rabbit Hole—making it seem as though the ceiling was dropping, the walls caving in. How they stood back and watched—father and son—enjoying my breakdown, my split with reality.
Though once I discovered the true physical difference between Dace and Cade, realized how their eyes are nothing alike—something Paloma claims no one else has been able to discern—I was sure I was immune to his tricks. Sure he couldn’t mess with me. Yet there’s no denying the tug I felt just a moment ago when he fixed his gaze right on mine.
The way he yanked hard on my soul.
I drop Dace’s hand and bolt for the spring, gasping in horror when I see that what I once thought was healed, returned to its former enchanted glory, was anything but.
“Not quite the paradise you took it for, is it?” Cade’s laugh creeps up from behind. Teasing. Taunting. As I gape at the canopy of blooms I once viewed as vibrant, budding with life—now turned to a snarl of blackened dead vines infested with rats, left to droop over a horrible, putrid, rotting cesspool of a spring that smells just like death.
Even the lawn of green velvet where Dace and I shared our love is nothing more than a burned-out rug swarming with insects.
And the wounds I thought healed are now back—my finger once again throbbing, swollen, and red—my feet covered in seeping blisters that stick to my shoes.
Dace lets loose a long stream of curses and yanks hard on my hand. Urging me to leave, to run, to get out while we can. But I can’t go just yet. There’s something still left to see.
I whirl around, horrified by the monstrous sight that confronts me.
My stifled cry of anguish cause Dace to turn. His eyes widen in disbelief when he sees the Cade from my nightmares. The one with gleaming red eyes, an open gash of a mouth, and the swarm of two-headed, soul-stealing snakes shooting out from the place where his tongue ought to be.
But unlike the Cade from my dreams, this one swiftly expands as though molded and stretched by unseen hands. His flesh adopting a strange scaly texture, emitting an odd reddish glow—as his torso lengthens, his limbs bulk up and widen with thick corded muscles—while his clothes, no longer able to contain him, shred and disintegrate, falling like feathers to his enormous clawed feet. Leaving him massive and naked and looming before us, with his faithful coyote inflating right along with him—two sets of eyes glowering an identical red.
Without a word, Dace drags me toward Horse. His good arm circling my waist, about to heave me onto his back when Horse gallops away and Raven soars with him. Leaving us with no choice but to race through a dying land that grows bleaker with each passing step.
