Another sharp pain through my brain has my mind yanking back from the vision, and my body falling to the side into something hard. A huff of breath rushes past my lips, my eyes squeezed so tightly shut I see bursts of white light. Forcing my eyelids apart, they flutter open and closed, over and over, until the world comes into focus and I’m staring out over the diner once again, having never really left. The edge of the booth digs further into my ribs with each inhale I take, my fingernails piercing into the padding of the seat on the other side.
What the hell was that?
I rack my brain trying to figure it out, but the more I think about it, the fuzzier it becomes.
Did something happen to me last night? Is that why I can’t remember anything?
A gnawing uneasiness settles into the middle of my chest.
Did… did Ivy do something to me?
The charm around my neck warms against my skin, chasing away the chills slithering beneath my flesh. A slight zap shoots through my finger as I wrap my hand around it, the warmth now spreading throughout my body. It fills me with comfort, sending the confusing thoughts swirling in my head drifting away. Ivy would never do anything to hurt me. She only wants what’s best for me. I don’t need to seek her out. I just need to move on with my plan of righting the wrong I did to Evan and then get myself out of town before I put anyone else in danger.
Outside, the sun hits my face, blinding me to the vehicle screeching to a halt in the middle of the street. Car horns blare in the background, combining with angry shouts. I shield my eyes to get a better look at what’s going on and find Sebastian running across the lanes toward me. Behind him, Chester maneuvers the idling black SUV back into traffic.
My gaze shifts back to Sebastian, my heart beating a hundred miles an hour for a hundred different reasons. For half a second, I can’t move, the rush of blood humming in my ears drowning out his shouts. Scenarios play out in my head, bouncing back and forth between him scooping me up into his arms and telling me everything is okay, to him taking me back to the center where the rest of the chasers rip me apart for the crimes I’ve committed.
The latter won’t let me stay to find out which one it’ll be. Better safe than sorry, right? Just because Sebastian and I have this thing between us, it doesn’t mean it’ll win out over his responsibilities as a chaser. In all honesty, he shouldn’t choose me. He should turn me in. It’s what I deserve. Chasers are meant to protect the world from witches like me, not the other way around. I can’t let him risk himself for me, but I also really don’t want to face what the chasers might do to me once they have me.
I need to leave.
I take a step away, ignoring how wrong it feels to put any kind of distance between us. But what choice do I have? I’m a monster, he’s a chaser, and all I want is for him to be safe, and right now that’s from me.
Closing my eyes, I picture the last place he would ever think to look. Hideous orange blobs meant to be flowered wallpapering and nasty, stained brown-stripped carpeting take shape within my mind. Each wisp of memory becomes stronger until the room coming together around me is nearly solid enough to touch.
Air swirls around my body, pressing against my skin as a feeling of weightlessness lifts my feet from where they stand. Another second I’ll be gone, and he’ll be safe.
“Indi, wait!”
The desperate urgency saturating Sebastian’s voice has my eyes slitting open the smallest amount big enough to see him reaching out just as the world around me begins to shift and change. The hurt on his face crushes my heart, and I squeeze my eyes closed, telling myself I’m not looking because the rush from whooshing from one place to another is disorienting and not because seeing the frustration and confusion warring within his eyes makes me want to give up everything to make it go away. Even if it means I’m taken prisoner for the evil I’ve committed.
“Indi.”
Feather light fingertips brush against my cheek in the stillness of the room, and I find myself leaning into their touch. When I open my eyes, Sebastian is standing in front of me, and I’m left caught staring into endless dark ocean blue irises with just a touch of brown in the left one. He sways on his feet, his hand dropping from my cheek to grip tightly around my arm to keep from falling over. Never once does he look away, keeping us both suspended in a world frozen in one held breath.
A scream severs our gaze and has us both looking to the side. A dark-haired woman sits in the middle of the bed, a sheet wrapped around her body. She screams again, then shouts for someone named Jimmy.
A large guy with arms the size of boulders bursts through the bathroom door, a towel barely big enough to cover everything, wrapped around his waist. “Who the hell are you? And what are you doing in my motel room?”
Sebastian grabs my hand and runs out the door, dragging me behind him. The man in the towel follows us out into the parking lot, shouting things I’m too keyed up to pay attention to. It’s probably for the best, anyway. I doubt he has anything nice to say about two teenagers suddenly appearing out of thin air in his room.
A half a block later, Sebastian drags me into an alleyway. He peeks around the edge, making sure the dude in the towel didn’t decide to follow any further before turning back to me. The emotions churning in his eyes are a volatile mix of relief-filled happiness and anger. I take a step back, not sure which one I’m going to experience first.
He jerks me into a hug so tight I can barely breathe, then loosens his grip just enough to press his lips against mine in a fevered, desperate kiss. He pushes me back, his hands now gripped around my upper arms. “Where have you been? You disappeared and no one could find you. Not even Liv could find you, and she’s been scrying all night. We thought a vampire had found you and you were…” He trails off, leaving the word dead unsaid. “If I had lost you like I lost my sister Sofia, I…” He pulls me back into his arms—“Never do that to me again, Indi. Ever.”—then pushes me away once more.
He runs a shaky hand through his raven hair, the disheveled strands falling back over his forehead. “How are you hidden to that extreme? It can’t only be because of the protection spell your cousins cast on you. There’s no way their magic alone is that powerful. Not even the seers could locate you, Indi.” Fists clenching and unclenching at his sides, he paces back and forth in jerky steps. “Hell, we couldn’t even track your phone through GPS. And I kept calling and texting, and you wouldn’t answer.”
He stops in front of me, his eyes a hurricane of every emotion possible. “It’s like you were just… gone.” His gaze shifts back and forth over my face, studying my features. The rapid rise and fall of his chest slows, the fists at his sides uncurling finger by finger. He takes a step closer, his voice softer when he says, “Why, Indi? Why did you leave like that? Without even a word?”
I bite back the sting of tears fighting to be released. My heart breaks over and over with every passing second he stands there waiting for me to answer because there is no good answer to give him. Still, his eyes plead and my heart continues to crack under the weight of his stare. Every fragment stabs and cuts until I’m certain it’s going to rip me apart from the inside out, leaving nothing but a gaping hole behind. I press my palm against my chest, hoping to keep the shards locked behind my ribs, knowing it won’t. I hurt him and now my heart is being ripped out for it. It’s nothing less than what I deserve for having done the same thing to him.
He takes another step closer. “Why did you leave?”
“You changed motels,” I blurt out, not ready yet to explain my reasons because when I do, everything changes.
His eyebrows slam together as he stares at me like I just slapped him over the face and told him I was a long-lost fairy princess. “What?”
“Back there.” I jab a thumb over my shoulder. “The motel. It wasn’t your room anymore.”
“I never stay in one place for too long.” He shakes his head. “Stop avoiding my question. Why did you leave?” He stares at me point blank, the emotions swarmi
ng through his eyes creating a storm.
“Because I had to, okay!” I take a step back, and then another, until my back is pressed against the bricks of the building behind me. “Because I had to.”
“Why?” He inches closer, trapping me in between him and the wall. “You owe me at least that much after the hell you put me through in thinking you were lying dead somewhere.”
His gaze is unrelenting, digging into my resolve until I break. “Because of what I did at the diner. Because I’m a monster.”
10
The air between us is so thick it keeps me pressed against the wall, afraid to move, afraid to speak, afraid to breathe.
Hooking a finger under my chin, he lifts my face. I close my eyes, terrified of what I’ll see in his. “Open your eyes, Indi.”
I shake my head.
He wipes away an escaped tear from beneath my lashes, his thumb soft and gentle against my skin. “Please.”
That one word and the way he says it—so soft and pleading—shatters my defenses. I open my eyes the tiniest bit and stare at his shirt because I can’t meet his gaze. Not yet. “I’m sorry,” I whisper, and with those two words the rest spills out because I am sorry. I’m sorry I hurt him by leaving the way I did without explanation. I’m sorry I led him into thinking my life had been stolen by vampires like his sister’s had. I’m sorry I did what I did at the diner. I’m sorry for all of it.
“I didn’t mean to take things as far as I did at the diner. I swear. It’s just—the vampires had already killed so many. And Jack was being attacked. And Liv was hiding under the table. And you… I couldn’t let them hurt you. And I just…” I look up at him, still afraid of what I might see, but unable to stop myself. “I couldn’t let them hurt you.” I drop my gaze down to the ground. “If you have to turn me in now, I understand. I won’t fight you. I’ll go willingly, and the chasers can do whatever it is they need to do to me.” I swallow the lump in my throat, forcing myself to push all my nightmares of being tested and dissected to the back of my mind.
“No one is turning you in. You did nothing wrong, Indi.” He nudges my face back up and waits for me to meet his gaze. His eyes are so clear now, holding no ill will, fear, or anger, and I want so much to trust it. But doubt won’t stop creeping in through the cracks. “You are not a monster,” he assures me with such conviction I know he believes it. But he shouldn’t. I don’t.
“Yes, I am.” Memories flood my mind, leaving me drowning in the way Liv looked at me after I brutally bled out a vampire and incinerated the rest. I felt no remorse for what I was doing at the time. I held so much power and it was dark and it was intoxicating and I was drunk with it. Only a monster would enjoy what they were doing, and I enjoyed it. So help me, in that moment, I enjoyed it. “You didn’t see the way Liv looked at me, Sebastian. She was so scared, and she had every right to be. My eyes were black, and I did such terrible, terrible things. So when I woke up at the center locked away in an all-white room, I thought you knew what I did too. I thought you were there to—”
“I would never hurt you, Indi. Nor would I ever let anyone else hurt you. Not ever.” His gaze penetrates straight through mine as if he were somehow looking directly at my soul. “I told you, you’re the purest thing I’ve ever felt. You have so much light it radiates from you, and that hasn’t changed. You are as far from evil as one can get.”
“But I—” He places a finger over my mouth, cutting off my words.
“No arguments. My sixth sense about people is never wrong. There is not an evil bone in your body. I would know it if there were. I would feel it here.” He places my hand over his heart, the beats pumping steadily against my palm. “And I don’t feel that with you.”
“But—”
“No one faults you for what happened at the diner. Was what you did scary? Yeah. It was a pretty powerful dark spell you cast. But are we scared of you? No. And do you know why?”
I shake my head.
He rests his hand just under my collarbone. “Because your heart was in the right place. You were protecting the people you care about. You’re a good person, Indi.”
“Am I? Because when I think about what I did, I don’t feel like a good person.”
“And that there is exactly why you are. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t be worried about it now.”
“Easy for you to say. You were passed out while I cast my spell. You didn’t see the extent of what I did because if you had, this conversation would be very different.” I push him back a step and slip out from beneath his hold. Having him accept what I did is somehow worse than if he wanted to throw me over his shoulder and haul me back to the center. What I did was not okay. I crossed the line, and I shouldn’t be forgiven so easily. There’s darkness in me whether he wants to see it or not. Maybe it was already there; maybe it was put there when I temporarily died at the hands of a vampire, I don’t know. All I know is that I can’t deny its existence, and neither should he.
“Liv told me what happened, and even if I had seen it with my own eyes, I’d still be here saying the same thing I am now.” He catches me by the wrist before I get too far. “You’re not evil, Indiana, so will you please stop trying to run away from me?”
“How can you say that? I used dark magic. I cast a dark spell, and it wasn’t the first time.” Ivy’s words echo inside my head like a horrible song stuck on repeat. There are no such things as dark spells, only dark casters. Magic is all about intent and the manipulation of energy. The spell only becomes dark if you want it to. “I’m a dark caster. I take harmless spells and make them evil.”
And until I can make myself pure again, I can’t be with you.
The thought crushes my heart and silences my tongue, keeping me from saying it out loud, but it doesn’t make it any less true. He’s full of light, too, and I don’t want to darken it in any way.
I pull my arm to free my wrist from his grip, but he only holds on tighter.
“You are not a dark caster, and not all spells are harmless. There are some spells, like the one you used for instance, that are rooted in darkness, but it doesn’t mean you are evil for casting it.” His words completely contradict Ivy’s and I so want to believe him with every fiber of my being, but I’m not so sure I can discount what she said, no matter how much I want to. What reason would she have to lie? She doesn’t even know the way I used the spell.
Heat seeps into my chest beneath the charm, filling me with a numbing warmth. “You can’t prove that.” I jerk my arm again, this time freeing my wrist.
“Yes, I can. When you woke up, where did you say you were?”
“At the center.”
“Exactly. Which means you would have had to pass through the wards. You wouldn’t have been granted entry if you weren’t found worthy. You can’t be evil, Indi, if you’re pure of heart.”
“I was passed out when you took me there. Maybe the wards don’t work on the unconscious. Or maybe there’s a separate entrance where you take the bad guys to be locked up, and that’s how you got me in.” I don’t know why I’m arguing with him. He’s saying all the things I want to hear, but for whatever reason, I can’t let myself believe it.
“Fine, then I’ll prove it to you while you’re wide awake. We’ll go to the center right now, and you can see for yourself.”
“You want me to go right now?”
“You said you’d come willingly.”
I open my mouth to argue more, but he’s right, I did say that. “Fine.”
“Fine.”
Sebastian leans against the wall beside the blue door of the center. Arms crossed over his chest, a hint of a smile lifts the corner of his mouth. He’s so confident the doors will unlock for me, but what if he’s wrong? What if they refuse to open? What if my heart isn’t as pure as he thinks it is—or at all anymore?
The pendant Ivy gave me warms against my skin, filling me with a sense of dread. I don’t think it wants me to step through those doors anymore than I want to. I take a step back,
shaking my head. “I can’t.”
“Yes, you can. I believe in you, even if you don’t.”
“What if it doesn’t open?”
“It will.”
“But if it doesn’t?”
“Then we’ll leave and go wherever you want. But I promise you it will open.”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you trust I would never hurt you?”
“What?”
“Do you trust I would never hurt you?”
“Yes.”
“Then say the words.”
My heart pounds so hard against my ribs, I swear I can hear them crack. Doubts swirl through my head, telling me to run, to hide, to get as far away from here as I can because I’m not good. They tell me my heart is dark, my magic is dark, I am dark, and as soon as I reach for the door everyone will know.
But then I see Sebastian watching me. There is not one ounce of fear or doubt in his eyes. He one hundred percent believes in the light he sees in me, so much so that for a moment, the voice whispering about how evil I am, silences. The way he sees me makes me want to believe, to hope, to pray he’s right. Maybe some spells truly are dark, and Ivy is wrong when she says otherwise. And even though I did cast a dark spell, maybe Sebastian is also right in saying it doesn’t make me a dark caster since my intentions behind it were pure.
Or maybe I’m putting too much faith in a whole lot of maybes. Either way, there’s only one way to find out.
“Here goes nothing,” I mumble under my breath. I reach for the door as a series of soft glowing blue shapes take form. Squeezing my eyes shut, I say the words that will determine my fate.
“Transiet tantum ii qui mundo sunt corde.” Only the pure of heart shall pass.
The touch of cold metal, seeps into my hand, and with one last held breath, I pull. The door swings open with ease, and I step inside with my eyes still closed—just in case.
Of Darkness & Light: Blood Descent Book 2 Page 10