His expression shifts again as his temperature soars past one hundred, his blood racing and his skin turning pink with the rising heat. Sweat drips from me, and I dig deeper, watching with malevolent satisfaction as his eyes roll back and his body begins to thrash.
“Auggie?” Gunnar’s voice is frayed by alarm, but I barely hear him. Blisters swell and burst across William’s skin, his temperature passing two hundred and still climbing. Smoke rises from him in wispy threads, his skin splitting and crackling, the stench of cooking meat spreading along the corridor. My chest heaves, my heart pounds, but I don’t let go.
Dark fluid is leaking from his nose and ears when the first tongues of flame erupt along his twitching arms—and then he is completely engulfed. White-hot fire consumes him from the inside out, liquefying his brain, instantly severing the magic that’s kept him going since the day he died. Within seconds, his flesh and blood are reduced to ash, and all that’s left is a smoking pile of dust and bone in the middle of the school hallway.
My limbs shake, sweat stinging my eyes, and a relentless pain hammers at my temples. The shadows swim and wobble, winding themselves around me, and the ringing in my ears is unbearable. Gunnar takes hold of me, shouting something—but he’s too late. The shadows lunge down my throat and I drop away.
Moray, Scotland
1053
The fell of dark was at last upon the heath, rendering the low fog blue where it crept through heather and gorse. Wrapping his cloak tighter around his shoulders, the bearded man raised his lantern against the gloaming, and cast another furtive look around. He was alone, of course; he’d been alone since he’d left the outskirts of Inverness—but this body was depressingly vulnerable, and even a common thief could pose a mortal threat.
Frankly, it was insulting.
He sensed the sisters long before he saw their fire burning, a wavering glow in the distance that answered the light he carried, and he hurried onward. The trio had made camp within the remnants of an old abbey church—a long-abandoned ruin in the desolate countryside, its walls crumbling and caked with moss. Superstition was a plague in this part of the country, and the three women had exploited it with admirable efficiency, driving away the curious with unexplainable phenomena and eerie cries in the darkness.
The doorway to the abbey was an arched gap, a hole broken through the side wall where hellish light danced, shadows bounding like feral beasts. As pointless as the gesture was, he drew his sword before making his way inside, an instinct this particular body found it comforting to obey.
Firelight beat against the stone walls and rotted ceiling, the dark void of night visible where the roof gave way, and the odor of peat smoke clung greedily to the air. Long since reclaimed by nature, the nave of the old church was a corridor of trampled weeds and fractured statuary—at the center of which three shrouded figures gathered around a shallow pit dug into the floor. Ringed by stones, it cast up a column of bright flames that curled and twisted in unnatural shapes.
“By the pricking of my thumbs,” one of the sisters remarked, her attention still on the fire, “something wicked this way comes.”
“Is that any manner in which to greet an old friend?” The bearded man couldn’t resist a sly grin.
Quick as a snake, the leftmost figure produced a weapon from the folds of her cloak, a long knife with a bone handle. Her head turned minutely in his direction, she stated, “We have other greetings to offer, Azazel. Don’t tempt fate.”
The Corrupter grinned wider, his skin prickling all over in the presence of his children—and what rebellious children they were. “Your blade is no match for mine, Brixia.”
Drawing back the heavy veil that concealed her face, she at last favored him with a direct look. Her skin and hair were so pale they were almost white, but her eyes were dark as the night itself. “You are not the vermin this blade is meant for.”
“We need no weapon to kill you,” the woman in the middle reminded him, lifting her own veil. Dark skin, dark hair, lines tattooed beneath her bottom lip … this was Ket. She cast a handful of herbs into the fire, and they were consumed in a flash of blue sparks.
“If your death was our plan, you wouldn’t have made it this far.” The third witch revealed herself—Sulis, with tan skin, colorless eyes, and a crown of iron-gray braids. From her own cloak she produced a rat, already dead, and tossed its limp body across the circle. Brixia snatched it from the air, sliced open its gut, and wrung its blood into the flames. A ball of greasy black smoke belched out of the pit and rolled toward the ceiling.
“Your death will come, with or without us,” Brixia added, wiping the blood off her hands with an old rag. “Already the sand slips out.”
“Would you like to know your fate?” Ket asked.
“Perhaps he’s seen it himself,” Sulis suggested with a devilish smile.
“I’ve seen many fates.” The Corrupter lifted his sword, running his fingers along the sharpened edge. It was no show piece; not so long ago, it had claimed the head of a king. “Some of them are yours. Death has grown impatient waiting for you three—perhaps it’s time you joined your sisters.”
“Is that what brings you here?” Sulis looked amused.
“Surely not.” Brixia was annoyed. “He’s only trying to sound important.” She waved her hands at the smoke and it quickly reshaped itself, forming the appearance of a head clad in a knight’s helmet.
“He is important,” Ket stated reasonably. “Mac Bethad mac Findlaích, Mormaer of Moray, King of Scotland. He leads the country—for now.” She waved her own hands, and the smoke reformed again in the shape of a small child.
“Until the forest comes to Dunsinane.” With that cryptic conclusion, Brixia made a ring of miniature trees sprout around the child’s feet.
“Until he joins our sisters in death for another life.” Sulis snapped her fingers and the fire leaped upward, swallowing the apparition whole before subsiding again.
“Is this what you three do?” The Corrupter gestured. “Thousands of years spent in this realm, performing puppet shows to entertain yourselves?”
“Mac Bethad mac Findlaích is the only puppet on this stage,” Sulis purred.
Ket gave a nod. “And the show is hardly entertaining.”
“We only watch because we enjoy the ending.” Brixia stoked the flames. “We watch to make sure it always ends the same.”
“One of these times, it won’t,” the Corrupter promised darkly. “Be it in a hundred years or a thousand, the Ascension will come. One of these times, the stars will be on my side, and everything will change.”
Sulis shrugged, unconcerned. “Perhaps. But not this time.”
“This time,” Ket continued, “the blade you swung swings back.”
“The stars don’t take sides,” Brixia chided him. “But Death will take you, gladly.”
“Death has gobbled me up before, but it always spits me back out.” The Corrupter smiled again, flexing his grip on the hilt of his sword. “And I don’t intend to be dogged by you three forever.”
“Ah.” Brixia clasped her hands. “Now we are getting somewhere.”
As in ages past, he reached for them with his mind—and as in ages past, an unseen wall crafted of magic kept him out. But Mac Bethad mac Findlaích was a very talented swordsman—a trained warrior who had led armies into battle—and his body handled a blade with natural intuition. The metal sang as he swept it up, smoke cleaving around its gleaming edge.
Which was as far as his advance got. Ket flung out her hands, something invisible rippling across the empty nave, a coil of air that tangled around the sword and wrenched it from his grip. Before he could run after it, Sulis gestured, and flames jumped from the pit. Streaking across the ground, they encircled the man and blazed up, forming a deadly curtain that trapped him in place.
“You waste our time and energy, Azazel.” Ket narrowed her eyes. “We are not on Death’s menu. Not tonight.”
“Tell us your purpose here,” Sulis
demanded imperiously, a golden light gathering in her eyes, “before I decide to cut this puppet’s strings myself.”
The curtain of flame leaped higher, licking dangerously at the weathered boards of the collapsing roof, and the bearded man began to sweat from the heat. No matter how many times he died, each experience was freshly unpleasant. “My purpose here is simple. I have come with a proposition.”
And there, backed by flame in a crumbling church, the Corrupter shared his design for eternity—and made each of them an offer …
29
The last vestiges of a dark dream cling to my thoughts when I force my eyes open, lids heavy as a lead apron—a lonely battlefield, churned earth, an army hidden by makeshift camouflage—and I know it’s a memory from yet another life I never lived. A throbbing headache pounds nails into my brain, so sharp I want to vomit, and for just a moment I’m ready to give this body to the Corrupter.
“Auggie?” Gunnar hovers over me, his expression apprehensive. “How do you feel?”
“My skull is malfunctioning,” I reply through gritted teeth. “Please remove it for me.”
“I got you some water. I thought you might need it.” He indicates a glass on the side table. “You were kind of … sweaty tonight. A lot.”
I sit up, and my brain seesaws dangerously, everything unsteady. I’m on the couch in my living room, and the sky outside the windows is a slate gray. Dawn is coming. “What happened?”
He helps me bring the glass to my lips, his brows creasing with concern. “Do you not remember?”
My instinct is to tell him that’s a stupid question—if I remembered, I wouldn’t be asking—but as I think back, an image comes to me in a startling instant: fire. I can practically see it in front of me, towering, rollicking, smoke pouring up to the ceiling. “Something was burning?”
“Yeah, you could say that,” Gunnar allows, forcing me to drink some more.
“It was in the church.” Words echo in my ears, and I repeat them without thinking. “‘The stars don’t take sides.’”
“What?” Gunnar tucks a gentle hand under my chin, turning my face to his so he can look into my eyes, more worried than before. It’s embarrassing how welcome I find his touch. “Auggie, what are you talking about? This was at your school.”
When he says it, it’s as if a filter is removed from my mind, and a new picture swims into focus. The hallway, those glowing eyes, that ferocious heat. “The vampire. William.”
“Was that his name?”
“Yes.” I reached too deeply into his memories, I think, because they’re stuck to me. His rocky childhood, his surly adolescence, his descent into self-pity and retaliatory violence. “I killed him, didn’t I?”
“You immolated him,” Gunnar corrects softly. “Did you know you could do that?”
“No.” I can’t look at him. “And … yes. I think a part of me did.” He doesn’t have to ask which part. “I didn’t … It’s not why I made him come back. I just wanted some answers.”
Reaching for something on the floor beside the couch, Gunnar says, “Lucky for you, then—William dropped what he was trying to steal when you made him explode.”
The edges are singed, but when he unrolls the heavy sheet of paper, I recognize it immediately. It’s the sketch I did the day I met Jude. “This is mine.”
I’m not exactly surprised—there isn’t much else Rasputin would be after in the Fulton Heights High art room. For days, I’ve been assuming it was locked in a Brotherhood vault somewhere … but, then, Mr. Strauss told me he wanted to take pictures of it. Watching me, Gunnar asks, “What does it mean? Who are these three women?”
“I don’t know,” I say, avoiding his eye. “I’m, like, ninety percent certain all these people are watching the Corrupter get executed in one of his lifetimes? But I don’t know when or where—and I don’t know why Rasputin would want it.”
Self-consciousness heats my face as I carefully tell the lie. For the first time, I think I do know who those ladies are supposed to be. My mind is fixed on Ximena’s account of the three undead witches who faced Azazel in the past, who have supposedly tracked him from life to life ever since.
Maybe Rasputin wants my practice sketches because he’s a Corrupter fanboy, and this will be a great exhibit in his private collection someday. Or maybe he wants any information he can get about the sorceress coven that might stand between him and his dreams. The witches could be Azazel’s worst enemies … or his biggest groupies—and until I know which it is, I can’t afford to share what little I know about them.
“I can’t wait to see the look on that gangly bastard’s face when I make him combust.” Just imagining it warms the cockles of my heart. He kidnapped my parents, terrorized my best friend, slaughtered people … I’m glad the only ability I have to stop him involves an incredibly painful death. “Wait till he finds out I’m not as helpless as he thinks.”
Gunnar sits back. “You can’t be serious.”
“Why not?” Gesturing out the window, trees and rooftops taking shape against the sky, I state, “The sun will be up soon, and wherever he’s hiding, he’ll be stuck there until sunset. I’ve got all day to find and torture henchmen until one of them gives him up.”
“Auggie, you need to listen to yourself.” Gunnar is emphatic. “This is a bad plan.”
“I’m learning to resist mesmerism, and I can destroy him without having to lift a finger.” Just saying it is empowering. The Corrupter may be killing me, but at least I won’t go alone. “You should want to help me. Doesn’t getting rid of Rasputin mean less competition for Team Dark Star when it’s finally Pop-Goes-Azazel?”
“You almost died tonight!” Gunnar barks, tossing his hands up. “Don’t you get that? The magic you tapped into at the school is more than a normal human body is built to withstand, and it almost destroyed you! If you try using it against Rasputin—a vampire with some actual command of the dark arts himself—you might not survive.” I open my mouth to argue, and he cuts me off. “He won’t be alone. Did you think about that? He’ll be surrounded by adherents just like William, and all of them will die to protect him.”
“Good. Let them,” I snap, harvesting anger in place of confidence.
“You still don’t get it.” Gunnar sets his jaw, shaking his head in disgust. “You barely managed to kill William before you blacked out. You don’t have the control to handle ten or more vampires at once, and Viviane isn’t going to just hand you an army to lead against Rasputin until you make her a commitment—in blood.”
Our standoff lasts a tense moment, and then his eyes flit nervously to the window. The Mad Monk isn’t the only one who’ll be trapped by the sunrise, and I remind myself that Gunnar doesn’t have to be here at all. Maybe he’s not the guy I thought he was, but he got me out of the school and stayed with me while I was unconscious. Even if his loyalty is to the League, he’s not really my enemy. But even so.
“I can’t do nothing.” I grip the couch cushions. “I’m not pledging my allegiance to anyone on an empty promise—you guys have all lied way too much for me to trust you’ll keep your word once you get what you want. And whether I die fighting Rasputin or I die during the Ascension, what difference does it make?” As I get to my feet, I try to hide how dizzy I am. “Meanwhile, the Knights aren’t gonna waste time organizing their next attack; so you can help me, or you can get out of my way, but you’re not going to stop me.”
Gunnar looks up at me, his expression a turmoil of angst and regret, and he manages a barely perceptible nod. “Okay. You win.”
“I win?” I’m so shocked I sit down again. “Uh … what do you mean?”
“I mean you’re right.” He tugs his lucky necklace, raking his other hand through his hair. “A week ago, I didn’t even believe in the Corrupter, and now … the closer we get to zero, the less I think I want any of this.” Standing up, Gunnar walks a few paces and turns back. “I don’t want to cross Viviane, but it’s not like you getting caught by Rasputin will hel
p her out. And … and I don’t want you to die, Auggie.” With a helpless shrug, he looks at my feet. “If you promise not to do something stupid, I’ll help you save your parents.”
“You will?” I nearly fall off the couch. Maybe I should pretend to be all cool, like I knew I’d get what I want, but I can’t. “You’ll really help me?”
Gunnar struggles with his words for a moment. “Believe it or not, I wish this weren’t happening to you. Maybe that’s selfish—maybe I should be wishing it weren’t happening to anyone, but … you’re special.” Embarrassed, he continues to avoid my eyes. “I can’t protect you from Azazel, but this is something I can do.”
Before I can think twice, I’m off the couch and throwing my arms around him, so overjoyed that I don’t stop to consider how awkward the gesture might be. Gunnar freezes … but then he hugs me back, muscles shifting under the fabric of his T-shirt. Suddenly, all I can think about is how his body feels against mine, and how he smells like linen and fresh mint, and how very recently his tongue was in my mouth. And then I start getting an erection, and it’s incredibly inappropriate, because we were literally just talking about rescuing my parents from a murderous vampire, and what is wrong with me?
Gunnar pulls back first, and I wobble to the kitchen for another glass of water, my hormones and my brain cells crashing together like bumper cars. I still can’t figure out the futures I’ve seen, the shifting images of Jude and Gunnar in similar circumstances; I can’t figure out how I feel about either of them, or which vision I secretly hope comes true.
What if there is no destiny? What if there are multiple endings, all the time, and we just … stumble our way in and out of them? I don’t know who or what I want. I don’t know which of the two I’d rather kiss again. Truth be told, I think I want to kiss both of them—not because I’m developing feelings for them, necessarily, but because it turns out I really, really enjoy kissing someone I’m attracted to.
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