The Book of Black Redemption

by A L Hart

“Was it?” I challenged. “Because when I visited that coffee hub of mine, I saw the string of mugs you hung in the shop, those from all the people we helped. I saw the light in your eyes everytime you laughed with us. A genuine light. But most of all, that Christmas morning, when it was clear you’d surfaced completely and it wasn’t just a ruse—you were reluctant to show your true self. You stayed in the form of Ophelia. You wanted to experience Christmas; you wanted the happiness to last.”

  “I desire nothing more than to undo both worlds. We cannot fight our designs.” Yet there was little force behind his words, his eyes having fallen to the floors, Jera’s screams dying down.

  “When you whistled that song to the pixie, the pixie recognized you meant her no harm. You wanted to help Breone as much as I did.”

  “And yet you killed her.”

  “Because I didn’t know any other way. I needed to enter the Shatters and if that was a prerequisite for saving my world, so be it. It’s my sin. If I was designed to heal and fix things, then how was it I did something so terrible?”

  He made to speak, but only pressed his lips together, the frustration becoming something more. “I’ve planned my father’s demise for years.”

  “Then . . . let me help you do it.”

  His head whipped up, the stun consuming his face. “Why would you?” he asked, skepticism and hope warring in his gaze.

  “Because.” I walked towards him then, and he stood frozen in his astonishment. “He hurt my family; he hurt my brother.”

  Lips parting, the Imperial Beast appeared youthful, human.

  “And you know best that that is something I don’t tolerate. So please, let me help you. Let me be there for you the way you were there for me.”

  When he remained unmoving, I opened my arms to him, staring him in the eyes. “You hugged me once,” I said.

  But the speechlessness seemed to have been etched into his body, immobilizing it. So I wrapped my arms around him anyway, surprised by how slight he was, frail, unexpectedly warm.

  Behind him, I saw Jera, still crouched and heaving in pain but lucid. Her grey eyes through her ink curls bored into mine. Trust no one, they said.

  Only each other, I returned.

  The small dagger manifested in my grasp with ease, and as I thought about the faery-giants’ lives, Niv’s, I found I was without hesitation. I would be what I needed to be for my world, for the ones I cared about. The decisions that came along the way, they wouldn’t be a barrier for me ever again.

  I plunged the blade with all my strength into the flesh of the Imperial Beast’s back, grimacing at the sensation, the pressure applied to break skin and muscles. But remorse wasn’t something I had a lot of as I shoved him forward and, conjuring another blade, I sent that into the creature’s chest with a grunt, drawing the bright ribbons of his dark energy into me.

  Pain broken in his eyes like dawn.

  “I want to say I’m sorry, brother,” I said, holding him up. “But I’d be lying.”

  He opened his mouth but crimson came before his words, the blood trailing down the corners of his mouth.

  I meant it. I wanted to feel remorse for this. I wanted to feel what was expected after bringing the death of another, but this . . . it was nothing like the pixie. This, it felt . . . good. I should have been concerned about that. I should have looked away, but as I felt his energy drawing into me, I found myself staring into his eyes, some innately proverse part of me wanting to see the moment the light went out.

  “Ah, the thrill of witnessing death.”

  I stiffened, blood running cold.

  I sensed it, those yellow-pink ribbons, there behind me. But that couldn’t be right. Jinxy’s copy, it shouldn’t have been able to regenerate for at least an hour.

  Across the floors, I saw the copy’s corpse, still wearing Lia’s face but very much dead.

  I turned, only to find my body disconnected, motionless, my muscles refusing to cooperate.

  Panic rose with the bile in my throat, my thoughts falling apart.

  “You lose,” he chuckled behind me. “Many tend to forget that Imperial Beasts are quite intuitive creatures. A shame you didn’t inherit this trait.”

  Jera’s screaming started back, filling the warehouse.

  My heart clenched, anger pouring through me uselessly.

  “These worlds will always be broken, Peter, so why not allow Damnation to run his course?”

  That was it. Of course.

  Jinxy was composed of three of the Maker’s emotions. Three beings. Torment, Death and Damnation. That day in the Shatters when someone had hunted Jera and I down, I’d sensed three of them, yet in the arena, Jinxy had been the only one recognized as our captors. Why hadn’t I recognized his dark energy in the field?

  “As I said, you should never underestimate me,” he spoke whimsically. “It becomes a bit insulting, wouldn’t you agree?”

  I tried to speak, but not even my lips would comply.

  “For a moment, you really had me with your whole family speech, brother. But you’ve forgotten, I’ve been around far longer than you. I’m older, stronger, and quite used to betrayal. I suppose you are the Maker’s child.”

  Silently, he came before me, eyes capering with triumph, victory and tinges of an insanity I knew could belong to none other than the Maker. “What a pity your words were lies. I would have helped save your world, but now I’m all the more eager to destroy it. As I will you.”

  Paralyzed, numb, I stared up at him helplessly.

  “I want to say I’m sorry, brother.” His smile was that of the deplorable abyss he was born in. “But I’d be lying.”

  Ch. 17

  Trees blurred by, the warm sun shining down through the windshield as the car cruised a gentle 40 on the highway. Prince played through the suv’s speakers at a soft purr, blowing the tropical car freshener all the way back to the back seats. Outside the window, the Denver mountains were a magnificent display of greenery.

  ‘I never meant to cause you any sorrow; I never meant to cause you any pain.’

  Melancholy rolled throughout the car, gentle, languid.

  “You’re unusually alert,” came a familiar voice.

  One that made my eyes sting as I looked to the left of me. Liz sat in the back seat with me, legs drawn up to her chest as she tapped her favorite pink mechanical pencil against the page of her journal. Bronze hair pulled up into a sloppy ponytail, she smiled a smile that had become an appendage of her. Dark eyes like mine shined, that subtle happiness her presence always brought on, just then, I felt it in full.

  What was going on? I was supposed to be in the warehouse. I was supposed to be . . .

  Jinxy.

  My heart lurched in my throat as I recalled those feline eyes staring into mine, Jera’s agony echoing somewhere far away, somewhere I would never be able to reach.

  “Alert but quiet, that’s more like you,” she laughed, leaning back, eyes returning to the pages as she scribbled something down on them.

  Up front, Dad tapped the wheel to the beat of Purple Rain with one hand, the other grasping Ma’s as they rest on the divider, thumb rubbing gently back and forth. Both were in their own heads, Ma gazing out the window, Dad wearing his thoughts on the corner of his mouth, which was pulled down in a frown.

  This day, I knew it, yet these details, these small things, I hadn’t noticed them the first time. How real was it? Why had he put me here of all places? Or . . . was I dead, was this death?

  “Dad.” I struggled to say his name, the words coming out in a strain as I clenched my hands.

  “Hm?” was his response. I could hear the agitation in that one noise, even if he went great lengths to disguise it.

  “Pull over. You have to pull over.”

  A greying brow lifted. “What’s up?”

  I couldn’t give them the whole story without them wanting to admit me. And if what little I remembered was right, I didn’t have time. “Nothing. I just need you to pull over.”
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  “Thought you needed to be home for something with University?” he said in a way that used to irk me but now made me want to hit something. “That is why we left your grandpa’s house early, right?”

  “Please, just stop the car.” I leaned forward—and hit an invisible wall. A barrier preventing me from moving beyond the immediate proximity of my seat in the back.

  No.

  Dad kept driving. “Don’t worry, we’ll get home in time.”

  We wouldn’t. We wouldn’t make it home at all, because these events, I knew them well.

  “Please stop the car, Dad.” I tried to reach inside me. I felt the dark energy there, but when I attempted to teleport out, to do something to stop the next chain of events, there was no response.

  Yet, just then, when the deer leapt out into the road, I still found myself shouting for him to swerve right, but the car swerved to the left.

  The blow was immediate, the semi-trucks horn blaring as the world around me spun upside down, the car flipping multiple times and getting caught beneath the trailer. Metal crunched, the jolts chattering through my teeth. The windows shattered, shards spraying into the car as the groan above told me how the trailer of the truck was tilting, falling.

  I felt no pain, not physical. Just as I hadn’t last time. Except, as smoke began to rush into the car, there wasn’t the same confusion as last time. I’d been so battered and torn the past few weeks, I was surprisingly grounded then as I looked over to Liz.

  I wasn’t ready for it. The pain, it knifed through me, the smoke in my lungs burning but not hot enough to erase the white stabs of anguish at seeing what’d become of her. Witnessing the lisp of death she dangled on.

  Unbuckling my seatbelt, I growled when I found the ward gone, allowing me to hurry over to her half mangled body, shaking my head furiously, the shock and horror eating into my head, blurring my thoughts.

  I’d known this would happen, this exact part, so why did it hurt more than the first time?

  Leaving me again.

  I felt the hot wetness on my cheeks as I sidled forward, wrapping her in my arms as her life exited her in colors of red, sinking into my clothes. I couldn’t look to the front seat, couldn’t face the state of our mom and dad because I remembered the reports clearly, describing how half of Dad’s body had been crushed, the other half somewhere close to Ma’s unconscious one.

  A burble rose above the loud hiss of the ruined engines and sirens. Liz, she was watching me, trying to say something, but all I got was blood.

  I shook my head, wishing I could somehow take her pain away, but there was nothing I could do but hold her closer, pretending there wasn’t this metal piece jutting from her abdomen, taking my sister from me all over again.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered to her then. “I’m sorry I wasn’t the brother you needed to me to be.” Selfish, apathetic, always despising her success when I should have been encouraging it. I was sorry for a lot of things, but that? That was one of my biggest regrets with her. Not being there for her when she’d always been there for me.

  But then, all at once, she vanished from my grip. I cried out, reaching as if I could rebuild her body in my arms. The scene, it broke apart, fading and drifting.

  Reforming.

  My mind jerked back. Blackening. Then clearing.

  Trees blurred by, the warm sun shining down through the windshield as the car cruised a gentle 40 on the highway.

  ‘I never meant to cause you any sorrow; I never meant to cause you any pain.’

  “You’re unusually alert.”

  I swallowed the lump in my throat and glanced over to Liz. No blood, no metal piece of the car’s door. Only a journal, pencil, that warm energy I could never replicate.

  “I know,” I whispered, lifting my hand and pressing it out towards the front seat where Ma sat. I felt the cool press of the magical barrier, and this time I saw the orange ripple confirming its presence.

  I understood then. There was no stopping it. This loop, this wasn’t death.

  The deer, it leapt out into the middle of the road. Dad, he swerved the wheel. The semi-truck’s lights aligned with ours.

  This . . .

  This was Torment. And me, Jinxy was right, I’d lost. Only this time, it wasn’t just my family I’d lost. But my world itself.

  No, this wasn’t torment.

  This was what I deserved.