by Cheree Alsop
I forced my mind to focus as the fourth door was decimated. In a last-ditch effort, I thought of what James had said over the phone about the creature when Virgo asked him.
“The khavis is an ancient phantom known as a ghost eater,” he had said, his voice small in the speaker. “It devours souls and is a threat to all who encounter it. Its only weakness is itself. It will hunt and devour all within its reach.”
The hunting and devouring was true. And I was soon to be in its reach again. I pushed away the despair that filled me and thought over James’ most important statement. Its only weakness is itself.
“How could it be its own weakness?” I asked aloud.
The final door tore through. The khavis leered down at me. Its red eyes were alight with triumph, and its claws, already coated in my blood, reached for my throat.
I kicked upward and knocked its hand away. Using energy I didn’t have to spare, I dove beneath its legs and came up running. My feet slipped on my blood that coated the tile. I slammed into the far wall, ducked my head, and threw myself into the mirror.
I fell to the floor. Glass rained down around me. The khavis wheeled to a stop and stared down the destruction. Hundreds of khavises stared back from the pieces of broken mirror. The creature’s eyes widened and it reared back. A roar of pain tore from its throat. It scrambled backward into the wreckage of the stalls it had created.
“You don’t like that, do you?” I asked.
I picked up a huge shard and pushed gingerly to my feet.
I limped forward over the broken glass and held up the piece.
“See your weakness,” I said.
The khavis met the gaze of its reflection. An unsavory scent touched my nose as smoke began to waft from its eyes. But it didn’t look away. It tried to move its head, but its eyes were locked onto the image of itself. A shriek escaped it.
“Zev, what’s going on?” Ceren asked from the broken doorway.
“S-stay right there,” I told her. I held up a bloody hand. “Don’t come any closer!”
She looked from me to the shard of the mirror I held, and then to the creature at my feet. A hand flew to her mouth. She backed up to the door and watched as the putrid smoke began to billow from the creature’s mouth and ears.
A strange hissing noise started. I held the mirror higher and watched as the creature’s body thrashed in protest. Its eyes rolled back into its head, the smoke turned to an angry red color that made the air stifling to breathe, and the khavis’ skin began to slough off to the floor.
“I can’t watch,” Ceren said.
But I couldn’t tear my eyes away. I had to see it die. It had to be destroyed to end the threat it was to her. I would see it through.
I came to on my knees with the mirror still aimed at the khavis. There was nothing left of it but a pile of dark red, charred bones and the stench of sulfur in the air.
“Z-Zev?”
The glass shard fell from my fingers with a crash. It took all of my strength to look at Ceren. “Are you alright?”
Tears streamed down her pale cheeks. “I am, but you aren’t.”
I looked down at my stomach. The red that covered my hand, my shirt, and my pants wasn’t promising.
“I’m not great,” I said.
“We’ve got to do something,” Ceren replied. She moved closer. “We need to get help. Someone needs to help.”
My head felt heavy. I let it hang. “There’s no one.”
“Then we need to get you to the moonlight,” she continued. “You showed me how it healed that knife cut. If we get you there, you might be alright.”
I tried to smile, but my face felt numb. “Too much blood,” I said. “It has…it has to stop.”
“Then let’s get it stopped,” Ceren replied.
I tried to stand, but my hand slipped on the wall of the bathroom and I fell to the floor, leaving a bloody handprint on my way down.
I could hear Ceren talking to me as I lay there, but the words didn’t penetrate the haze in my mind. I could feel the warmth beneath me. The fact that it was my lifeblood came to me with a sort of detached feeling of regret. After all I had been through, was I really going to die face down on the floor of a bathroom in a pool of my own blood?
It made sense that it was my own blood. How else was I planning to die? In someone else’s blood?
Yes, of course! I found myself arguing. I would much rather die in someone else’s blood because that would mean that I took someone down with me.
But I was done killing, wasn’t I? That wasn’t who I was anymore.
Then who was I?
The silence that followed the question made me grimace. If I died, there would be no answer. I would be a nothing, a nobody, and I would have left nothing but pain in my wake. I couldn’t go down like that. I had left the Lair for more than just a painful death in a cold men’s bathroom. I wanted to know what was out there, the potential, the realities of life for my human side and not just as a monster.
And to experience love.
With that thought, sound came ringing back. I heard crying and a moan. The moan was mine, but who was sobbing with such heartache?
I forced my eyes to open and blinked blearily at the light in front of me. My gaze focused on a face, a beautiful face, that was half hidden by the hands that covered it. Tears trickled between her fingers to drop with tiny splashes on the floor. My eyes followed one of the drips. It landed on small green and white tiles that were smeared with an alarmingly bright swath of red.
“You can’t give up now,” she sobbed, her shoulders shaking. “You came to save me. You can’t die for me.”
“I-I’ll try not.”
The sound of her shaking breaths stopped completely when I spoke. Ceren lifted her head from her hands and looked down at me. Her eyes were red and face was blotchy from crying. I had no idea ghosts could cry. It was perhaps the saddest thing I had ever seen in my life.
“Zev?” she said.
I struggled to push upright. The effort to sit up with my back against the chilly tiled wall let me know just how close I was to dying.
“I-I have a plan.”
She nodded quickly. “Anything. Let’s do it. How can I help?”
It was a helpless question coming from the ghost. She couldn’t touch me, stitch up the wounds, or go for Virgo, Mitch, or the others. They couldn’t even see her. Yet her brow creased with stubborn determination. I drew on that to pull up to a standing position.
“I….” It took a lot of strength just to speak. I firmed my resolve and said, “I need to get to Shipley’s…class…first aid kit,” I managed to say.
“Good idea,” she replied.
I threw her a smile. She gave me one in return that almost hid the worry in her brown eyes. I realized then and there that the color of brown of her irises was my favorite color in the world. It was soft and glowing, like the leaves when the first breath of autumn touched the world.
“Come on, you’ve got this,” she said.
Coaxed on by her cheering, I made my way to the hall. From there, the distance to Professor Shipley’s classroom looked like miles even though it was only about half the length of the hall. The torn up tiles reminded me of the monster we had left in the bathroom behind us. Forward definitely held more promise than back. Gritting my teeth, I slid one foot in front of the other.
Blood from the glass that had cut my feet in the bathroom made a gruesome trail of my footsteps. The blood that coated my side was sticky and thick. A heavy copper taste lingered on my tongue. I couldn’t keep my eyes open. Putting one foot in front of the other felt like the hardest work in the world, and my eyelids weighed a thousand pounds on top of that.
“Keep coming. You’re doing just fine,” Ceren said.
I opened my eyes and tried to focus on her. Was her glow fainter than before? Did that mean she was fading?
“Another step,” the ghost told me. “You’re almost there.”
“You’re beautiful.” The wor
ds escaped me before I even knew I was going to say them.
Her smile faltered and a tear leaked free from the corner of her eye. She wiped it away and said, “You already saved me. You don’t have to be sweet.”
I winced when a sharp pain surged through my stomach and said tightly, “Not sweet. Honest. For once in my life.” I looked up at her. “I’m telling the truth.”
She smiled at me through her wet gaze and said, “If we’re being honest, you look like you’ve had better days.”
That tore a laugh from me that left me gasping and leaning against the wall.
“Alright, alright,” she said quickly. “No more jokes. Let’s focus. You’re getting closer.”
“Another…joke,” I replied.
I couldn’t push away from the wall. It was all that was holding me up. I knew if I stepped forward, I would fall on my face and that would be that. I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the bricks.
“Zev, come on.”
“I can’t,” I replied. I hated how weak my voice sounded.
“Zev, look at me.”
The pleading in her voice made me open my eyes. She was standing only a few feet away.
“Zev, I need you to do this for me. Will you, please?”
Her tears were gone and her eyes were bright. She held me with her gaze.
“Just one step at a time. Come on.”
I couldn’t deny her. The pain was numbing and the loss of blood made a rushing sound grow in my ears, but I couldn’t look away from that pleading, beautiful gaze.
I felt the door beneath my fingertips and opened it. Emergency lighting shone over the professor’s desk like a beacon of hope. I stumbled against a desk, righted myself, and made my faltering way between the rows. I hoped Professor Shipley would forgive me for the blood that colored the students’ desks from my hands as I passed.
I leaned against one and it gave way. I caught myself before I could fall and pushed myself on toward Ceren’s voice. I reached the big desk, made my way around it, and collapsed in Professor Shipley’s chair. My breath left me in a rush, reminding me that I had been holding it.
“Find the first aid kit,” Ceren urged.
I pulled open the first drawer. Someone had come to class on my second day after wrecking on his bike. The professor had patched him up with superhero Band-Aids and ointment, stating that no one should bleed at college unless it was their soul opening up to partake of the divine knowledge within its walls.
Everyone had laughed; I now had the ability to appreciate the sentiment.
I found the kit in the bottom right-hand drawer. I pulled the plastic Tupperware container free. It felt much heavier than I thought it should. I set it on the desk with a sigh.
“That’s the mighty first aid kit?” Ceren asked with doubt in her voice.
For some reason, her question made me chuckle. A groan escaped me with it.
“Don’t laugh,” Ceren scolded. “Concentrate.”
She was right. It took all of my concentration to open the lid on the container. I didn’t have the patience or time to sort through all of the contents in their separate little compartments, so I dumped it on the desk. The impartial side of me noted that at least my right hand was beginning to respond; perhaps I hadn’t broken it punching the creature after all.
“That’s a lot of Band-aids,” Ceren noted.
I had to agree. I pushed my bloody fingers through the piles of strips. I was beginning to fear I would have to make do with a million bandages when my fingers brushed a plastic wrapper. I picked it up.
It wasn’t a true package of sutures. Instead, it was one of those little packets of multicolored thread I had seen in hotels or gas stations for clothing repair emergencies. I grimaced at the sight of the straight needles, but they were better than nothing.
“I don’t think the buttons are going to be useful,” Ceren said. I could hear the forced lightness of her tone.
“I don’t know,” I replied. I felt lightheaded and a bit giddy in a way that alarmed me. “Maybe buttons would keep it closed?”
Ceren stared at me.
“I’m kidding,” I admitted.
She shook her head. “I can’t believe you can joke around at a time like this.”
“Better now than never,” I replied.
She fell silent.
I glanced at her. “Too soon?”
She rolled her eyes with a begrudging smile. “It’s always too soon for dying jokes. Now focus on what you’re doing.”
My fingers shook as I tried to thread the needle. Ceren and I both breathed a sigh of relief when the thread finally went through.
“Pink?” she noted.
“Only tough guys use pink,” I replied.
That brought a small laugh from her.
I used several of the small alcohol wipes to swab the thread and needle, even though I doubted an infection was my first concern. The khavis had slashed through my side with all four claws, laying a wide swath open. It would require stitches through all of the slashes to stop the bleeding. The thought made me nauseous.
“Here it goes,” I said, steeling my nerves.
I had stitched myself up many times during my life, but it would never rank on my top ten list of favorite things.
“Just breathe,” Ceren said quietly. “You’ve got this.”
I shoved the needle through the first edge of skin. My breath rushed out. I sucked it back in through my teeth.
“That’s it,” Ceren said.
Her voice was muffled. I looked up to see her hiding her face in her hands. Immediate regret for putting her through all she had seen that night made me ache. I clenched my jaw and shoved the needle through the other side.
Black spots filled my vision. I rested my forehead on the desk and willed myself to keep breathing.
“What’s wrong?” Ceren asked. She caught herself and said, “Besides the obvious. How can I help?”
I squeezed my eyes shut. “I need a distraction, something to take my mind off this so I don’t pass out.”
Ceren was quiet for a moment before she said, “Have you ever had a girlfriend?”
That bought a snort of laughter from me. “Really? That’s what you ask?”
“I’m keeping your mind off it, aren’t I?” she replied. “Answer the question.”
Her demanding tone actually helped. I blinked and focused on my side, shoving the needle through again as I spoke.
“No, but I have issues with falling for girls,” I told her tightly. “I think it has to do with the wolf thing.”
“Wolves choose one mate for life,” Ceren said.
I stared at her, the thread forgotten for the moment. “You know that?”
She nodded. “I was attacked by a dog when I was little. My dad encouraged me to face my fears, so I used to read everything I could about dogs and wolves and coyotes and things.”
That explained her reluctance around the pit bull. “Did it work?” I asked curiously.
She shook her head. “I’m still afraid, but I’ve learned a lot.” She gave me a small smile. “My cousin has a little dog and we got along pretty well.”
I shoved the needle through another section. The stitching was horrible and I hadn’t even tried any knots, but at least the blood was slowing. I hoped that didn’t mean I was running out.
“In the Lair, we weren’t allowed to care about anyone.” I spoke through gritted teeth as I shoved the needle through the next section. “That way we were focused wholly on protecting the Master. But it felt wrong.”
My hands were numb. I found myself staring at the blood that coated them.
“What did?” Ceren asked, jarring me back to the present.
“Not caring about anyone,” I replied. “I think it broke me.”
“Because you want to care?”
I fell off the chair and landed on my back.
Ceren gave a little squeak of shock and knelt next to me. Her hands fluttered as though she wanted to touch me, but
knew she couldn’t.
“Zev, Zev, are you alright? Speak to me.”
It took a lot of effort to open my eyes. “I need to sleep.”
“No,” she protested. “You could die!”
“I can’t…keep my eyes open anymore.”
She looked around the room. “We need to get you to the moonlight.”
I tipped my head back to see the light that pooled on the floor beneath the windows. It could have been on another planet for how far it looked from where I lay.
“Come on, Zev. You can make it,” Ceren urged.
I sucked in a breath and pushed up to my knees. I held my side. At least when I pulled my hand away, the bleeding had slowed.
“Why is love so bad?” Ceren asked.
I glanced at her. “You mean besides the fact that I’m a monster?”
She lowered her gaze. “I shouldn’t have said that. You’re not a monster.”
“We’ve been over this,” I replied. I crawled a few feet forward. “Being a monster has gotten me this far.”
“It might save your life,” Ceren said in a tone I couldn’t read.
I pushed myself a few more feet and collapsed in the square of moonlight. “It might,” I admitted. “Right now, all I want is sleep.”
“Sleep,” Ceren told me. “I’ll protect you.”
The fact that a ghost was watching over me so I could rest made a weary smile cross my lips.
“And Zev?” Ceren said.
I cracked my eyes open just enough to see her form kneeling near me. “Yes?”
She gave me a little smile. “You’re pretty amazing, for a monster.”
“I’m going to remember you said that,” I replied.
She gave a little laugh. “Take it easy now, tough guy. Get some rest.”
I drifted off to sleep wrapped by the memory of her smile as she guarded me from danger.
Chapter Twelve
I awoke in a patch of sunlight. When I rolled over, Ceren was watching me.
A warm, relieved smile spread across her face. “Hello, sleepyhead.”
I smiled at her. “Hey. How long did I sleep?”