The Forever Girl

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by Immortal Ink Publishing, LLC

One booth in particular caught my eye. A young woman with dark hair and a Marilyn Monroe mole was turning tarot cards onto a table.

  First, the Fool, inverted—a bad decision. I knew this from when Ivory had done readings at a party in college. She’d taught me all about them, asked me if I wanted to do a reading to channel my past lives. I told her no, that I just wanted to make it through this one.

  Now I knew why she’d asked.

  When the lady turned the next card, my neck hairs prickled, and a shiver flashed down my spine, causing a small tremble in one of my hands.

  Death.

  But the death card was not literal. Not always.

  The reader stared right at me, tsking and shaking her head. I quickly looked away. The spread wasn’t for me. She’d been sitting with a customer. Still, I had to stop myself from speculating what the next card would have been.

  Charles spoke in Arabic with a man a few tables down while I admired a display of Persian rugs, Russian teapots, and age-blackened Greek tableware. Then he pulled me away by my elbow, telling me the man said there was a small shop around the corner that sold falafel wraps and freshly-squeezed mulberry juice for fifty American cents.

  The falafel shop owner—a darkly-tanned, older man with friendly eyes—sat in a woven lawn chair, a Bengal cat in his lap, his back to a simple wooden door. He invited us in and offered a sample of the food: hummus, tahini, and pita with a hint of lemon, and a tangy mulberry juice reminiscent of grapefruit. We ordered several falafels and a carton of the juice with some Styrofoam cups.

  Aside from the interactions with the vendors, Charles hadn’t said anything, and I didn’t press him for conversation. We arrived back at the main square to meet Adrian, who arrived moments later with a large bag in hand.

  “What’s your sign?” Adrian asked.

  “Sign?”

  “Zodiac. You’re a Sagittarius, right?”

  “I am, why?”

  “Come with me.” Adrian led us around the corner and into a narrow alley. He crouched down, and Charles and I sat across from him. “You said lifting things was draining, correct?”

  “Right.”

  “Well, I’m thinking perhaps you need fire to fully tap into your gifts. You’ll certainly need to maintain your energy if you’re going to do this.”

  “Great. What am I supposed to do, set myself ablaze?”

  Adrian smirked. He reached into the bag and set a copper bowl, similar to the scrying bowl I had at home, on the ground. From his pocket, he pulled a crumbled piece of paper and tossed it inside before striking a match to light a small fire. “Move the flames.”

  I focused intently on lifting them until they hovered over the bowl, then I lowered them back into place. “No energy drain,” I said. “Opposite, in fact. But we don’t have time for me to practice.”

  Adrian packed everything away and sat back. “Trust, Sophia.”

  Trust wouldn’t cut it. I had no idea what to expect. Going into things without a solid plan—admittedly, that had me on the verge of panic.

  “I sense your uncertainty,” Adrian said.

  I shook my head. “It’s silly, really.”

  “Best you tell me now.”

  Charles dipped his face closer to mine. “Sophia, if something is bothering you, please speak up.”

  My shoulders sank, and I gazed at Adrian. “It’s just kind of weird how you know all this stuff. The books you have, knowing where this place is, the passages….” I stared at my wrist, spinning the coils on the bracelet Charles had given me and twisting the beads. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to sound like I’m accusing you of anything.”

  Adrian’s expression was unreadable, but he nodded. “It’s fine.” He pulled a wallet from his pocket, slipped out a picture, and handed it to me. “My parents.”

  The photograph was a middle-aged couple with the same dark skin and kind eyes as Adrian. By the way they clung to one another, each resting a hand on a young boy’s shoulder, it was clear their family was built on love. I pointed to the boy. “This is you?”

  “Before I was turned.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “They were human informants for the Council. I was born inside those walls … raised there.”

  I returned the photo and slumped back against the alley wall. “I didn’t know.”

  “They told me my parents died during the supernatural war, back in the 1600s. After that, they took me in and raised me to take my father’s place.” Adrian’s jaw tensed for such a brief moment that I wasn’t sure I’d seen any movement at all. “They decided to turn me.”

  His gaze shifted from me to Charles then back again. “I was sent to fight in the war, killing the dual-breeds. I worked alongside Charles, though we weren’t friends at the time. When I noticed he always held back from making a kill, I confronted him, and another Cruor overheard. They thought I was the one allowing the dual-natured to go free, and they tried to kill me. In Charles’ anger, he shifted and killed those men to save me. It was then I realized he himself was dual-natured.

  “Since then,” he continued, “I’ve left the Council, though I’m certain they have never truly let me go. Thalia’s clan seems to always be near. When Charles arrived in the area with Blake and Adonis, he joined her clan to try to gain inside information on my behalf, though nothing much came of it.”

  I closed my eyes. In my heart, I’d always trusted Adrian. It was my mind I remained in constant battle with. When I opened my eyes, Adrian tilted his head, his expression curious.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You could have taken that from my thoughts, no?”

  “I try not to do that to my friends.”

  Adrian cleared his throat.

  “You never thought of it while I was listening,” I amended.

  “The truth comes out.” Adrian grinned and turned toward Charles. “Are you ready?”

  Charles was staring out toward the main road, but at the sound of Adrian’s voice, he glanced at his watch. “It’s time.”

  {chapter twenty-seven}

  ADRIAN LED US through a labyrinth of quiet alleyways where stray dogs scratched at soiled potato peels spilling from overturned garbage bins and nearby shop owners scared them away by banging their alley doors with metal spoons. Though cars, trucks, and taxis clogged the roadways, we trudged by on foot, not wanting to bring anyone else closer to the horrors of the Council.

  As we reached the outskirts of the city, I held my breath against the stench of exhaust fumes and sewage and fly-infested fish that must have fallen from a truck earlier in the day. The buzzing of insects was a cruel reminder of my curse, a sound I couldn’t shut out. Whenever I was too stressed to concentrate, there it was—the buzzing in my mind, overwhelming my ability to focus on the voices.

  “I don’t think I can do this,” I said.

  Charles swiveled toward me. “Then don’t. I never asked you to.”

  I didn’t say anything—didn’t let his sharp tone affect my response. I understood his anxieties colored his tone.

  He tensed his jaw and swallowed. “That’s not how I meant it,” he said quietly. “I don’t want you to. You know that.”

  “I know. But I didn’t mean I don’t want to. I’m just afraid I won’t be able.” I sucked in a deep breath, trying to push away the hissing in my head, but the noise wouldn’t budge. “I don’t know if I can tap into my gift. The noise won’t stop, and I can’t focus on any voices.”

  Charles wrapped an arm around me and pulled me against his chest. His breath warmed my scalp as he rested his chin there. “Let’s turn back. We’ll find you a place to stay tonight while Adrian and I go.”

  I pulled away, cutting my gaze toward him. “No. I need to do this.”

  Adrian put a hand on Charles’ shoulder and looked to me. “You’ve only recently learned how to tap into your gift. It’s natural the stress of this situation would cause regression. But if you want to get through this, you have to push your worries away. Where we
are going, there is no room for hesitation.”

  “You think I can do this?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you?” I asked, turning to Charles.

  “I don’t want you to,” he said.

  I pressed my teeth together. “Do you think I can?”

  He gazed solemnly into my eyes. “I know it.”

  With a resolute nod, I started up our path again. I could do this. Adrian believed it, Charles believed it, and now I just needed to believe it, too. I shouldn’t have needed their validation, but it helped. Dad always told me that sometimes it’s okay to need someone.

  I tucked my head against Charles’ shoulder, the old buildings of the inner city hanging back as we pressed forward. A few abandoned hovels perforated the desolate streets and, beneath the moonlight, patches of grass fought for life among the dusty knolls scattering the fields. Barbed wire fences stretched along the horizon and birds soared overhead, gliding with their saw-edged wings cutting through the air.

  Our dirt trail, dry as sawdust, wound toward a cemetery surrounded by towering, decrepit stone walls. A rusty lock grasped the latch of a wrought-iron gate.

  We walked past the neglected gate and followed the cemetery wall around the corner. A ways down, Adrian stopped and pointed at one of the stones.

  “Here,” he said. “My parents made this entrance before they died. No one else should know of it. If we climb over the walls, we’ll set off the sensors.”

  “This place doesn’t look like it would have sensors,” I said.

  Adrian gave me a quieting glare, then turned back to study the stones. Several had symbols, and, after tracing one in particular, he dug a large foreign coin from his pocket and lined it up with a small, encircled half moon.

  The wall opened like a sliding door, the top still securely in place. The narrow entrance opened enough for us to squeeze through sideways, then Adrian closed the passage behind us, the walls crushing small pieces of debris as the stones settled back into place.

  Light pollution from the distant city reflected off the sky, creating a pale luminescence over the burial grounds. Though my eyes had adjusted on the walk over, Adrian and Charles wove through the gravestones in a pattern I found hard to emulate.

  Thousands of headstones clustered in the dirt, their crumbling limestone spreading as far as the horizon. I tried not to breathe through my nose, but I could still taste the rotting, septic odor filling my lungs.

  Charles stopped beside me. His eyes were darker than usual, opaque as the ocean’s murkiest waters. “Are you ready?”

  There was no being ‘ready’. There was only doing what needed to be done. “We need to get your family back,” I said.

  “Our family,” he said. His eyes searched mine. “No matter what, do not come after us. It’s too dangerous.”

  I offered a noncommittal, “Mmhmm.”

  “I mean it, Sophia.”

  Something chalky coated my fingers and palm, and I realized I’d leaned on a gravestone. I snapped my hand away and wiped the dust on my pants. “I know.”

  Adrian cleared his throat. “Follow me.”

  He ushered us toward a cavernous ossuary. The musk of animals stuck in my nose. Human skeletons surrounded a support column and slumped against the walls near age-bleached skulls stacked on piles of ribs and femurs.

  These were the remains of spirits who had not been left to rest—those who had been buried in temporary graves and then excavated, their bones crammed in a hollow room due to a lack of burial plots.

  This was no place for performing rituals.

  Adrian looked from me to the ossuary and back again. “I know,” he said, “but it’s the only shelter nearby. You can’t just sit in the middle of the graveyard.”

  “What if they find me?”

  Apprehension rolled from Charles and Adrian in waves. Or maybe it was my own apprehension, rising like the tides and threatening to pull me away in the undercurrents. How could anyone cope with this—this vast, open, unknowingness?

  I let their thoughts roll into mine, but they were blocking me out. Adrian was mentally reciting Reluctance by Robert Frost, and Charles was thinking about some techie plug-in thing.

  “You’re both worried. What’s going on?”

  Adrian opened his mouth, but Charles looked at him and shook his head. “Sophia, of course we’re worried,” Charles said, “but we didn’t want to add to your distress.”

  “Tell me.”

  “We’re not hopeful.”

  “Not hopeful of what?”

  “I can’t live knowing I didn’t try to save my parents,” Charles said. “But you—you don’t need to be doing this. You must stay outside.”

  Adrian nodded. “We are faster and stronger and far more obligated than you. If anything goes wrong, leave immediately. You’ll be able to escape before they discover your presence.”

  “So this—” I waved my hand around the ossuary. “—this is all hopeless. Pointless.”

  Charles shushed me, rubbing his hands gently down my arms. It only made me angrier. “Pointless, no, but safer. This is the best way for you to help. Trust me.”

  “And if I never see you again?” I wiped my cheeks with the inside of my wrist. The anger was turning inward now. Anger at my selfishness. “You want me to live with the guilt you can’t?”

  Charles didn’t say anything else. He wrapped me in his arms and kissed my hairline and held me close until I calmed. He pulled back and studied my face. “You okay?”

  “You better come back.”

  “Forever, Sophia. Remember? After this, I promise you, I’ll seek out the Ankou to become a pure Strigoi and grow old with you.” Charles forced a smile, but his thoughts reflected his worries. “I’ll be okay.”

  I would make sure of that, even if I had to go in there and drag him out myself.

  He dropped the bag of supplies and pulled me hard against him, pressing his lips to mine. My mind held desperately to this moment, wishing he would never let me go, that we could stay suspended in this instant forever, stay here with his hands grasping the dark tiers of my dress, kissing me with a passion that filled me with a sense of life and hope.

  All too soon, he let go and stepped back.

  “I love you,” he whispered.

  Charles and Adrian geared up with the earpieces Adrian had bought earlier. Using ignisvisum, I’d be able to watch the events, and my clairaudience would allow me to hear the thoughts of the supernatural beings inside. I’d filter everything to Charles and Adrian through the remote headset. It was a plan that promised nothing.

  My hand moved slowly to my lips, my fingertips tracing over them as though I could feel some lingering imprint of Charles’ lips. I might never see him again. My throat constricted, but I blinked back the tears. The time for panic had passed.

  As I stepped into the ossuary, the floor creaked. Wood panels peeked out from shifted dirt. Some boards had been broken and tossed aside. I sank to my knees and set the supply bag on a discarded piece of wood.

  I ran through my opening rites until a protective barrier was visibly in place. Spirits floated near, some cupping their hands over the bubble of whitish membrane to stare and howl. Their coal-black eyes made my skin crawl, but they were the least of my worries.

  I took the tin bowl from my bag and filled it with cedar chips. I fumbled to strike a match. On my fourth attempt, the tip ignited, and I set fire to the wood. I relaxed my stare on the haze above the embers, mouthing the words to conjure the images. The charred cedar, burning beneath the translucent screen, broke up the vision a few times. I waited until I gained my focus to put on the headset.

  “I see you,” I said into my mouthpiece.

  What I actually saw was Adrian’s vision of Charles and Charles’ vision of Adrian displayed split screen on the ignisvisum projection. Trying to follow both would have drained my energy too quickly, so I focused on Adrian’s vision, hoping to keep my sights on Charles as much as possible.

  We’re
going in now, Charles thought toward me.

  They entered a mausoleum’s austere double doors and squeezed around a counter lined with partially-melted candles and puddles of stiff wax on makeshift tables made of cement blocks and boards of unfinished wood. Charles and Adrian hurried to the back of the darkened room, where Adrian tilted a large plank to the side and stepped through into a small, dirt-packed tunnel supported by wooden beams.

  The narrow passage led to another door, but Adrian didn’t try to open this one. He lowered onto one knee and swept away the soil with his hand to reveal a wooden trap door. This particular entrance was never locked as only Council members knew of it. I found it odd the place wasn’t secured by cameras, but I guess when you’re as powerful as the Council, no one dares break into your premises.

  Adrian opened the trap door, placed one hand on either side, and eased down. Charles followed. Stone walls surrounded them, a dark slate floor with water stains beneath their feet as they crept through the underground maze. I could almost feel the dank moisture of the corridors.

  The creak and jangle of the cemetery’s front gate, racketed by the surrounding spirits, threatened to distract me from my clairaudience, but I focused until the sounds of the real world muted from my ears.

  I opened my mind to all nearby supernatural activity. I released the thoughts closest to me—the spirits swirling in the darkness outside my protective barrier. One by one, I zeroed out other connections, using Charles and Adrian as markers to determine the placements of the minds I invaded. It took some effort, but I targeted the thoughts registering closest to Charles and Adrian. The farther they lurked into the dark passages of the mausoleum, the more the new connections grew in clarity.

  About three-quarters of the way down the hall, Charles and Adrian paused, half-crouched, looking at each other. Their lips weren’t moving, but their wordless communication was amazingly accurate. They pressed against opposite walls and slinked to the opening at the end of the hall.

  Two guards awaited out of view. Only another Cruor could sneak up on their kind undetected.

  “Left guard is half asleep,” I said. “Right guard is preoccupied.”

 

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