by Vicki Keire
Asheroth held it out to me. Arm taut, fingers wrapped with crushing strength around a thorn-studded stem, the action obviously caused him pain. When I realized what it was, I tried to flatten myself against the brick wall even more. I refused to touch it. “Where did you get this?” I rasped at him, against the wind and my own mounting horror. “How did you know?”
Asheroth held a slightly battered version of one of my courtyard roses, in all its blooming orange red glory. The crushed leaves and bruised petals released a sweet smooth scent that belonged to summer nights and lightening bugs, to bare feet and cricket-song. Among winter-dead vines and decaying statues, Asheroth’s offering bordered on desecration. When he realized I wasn’t going to take it, his expression changed. His eyes narrowed almost to slits. His muscles relaxed against his bones in a way that made everything about him seem feline and hungry. He prowled closer. “I told you once, Caspia. I keep track of her descendants.” He buried his nose in the petals, closing his eyes and inhaling deeply. His voice became very, very soft. “These were her favorite. I planted them here, as she lay dying in this very same hospital. The same hospital where all your relatives have died.”
I will not react, I commanded myself, because I knew that’s what he wanted from me. I had never before realized how much effort it took to hold myself completely still. Asheroth played with his flower and watched me with his diamond eyes until shadows crackled across my skin, sharp and far colder than the winter wind. He smiled at me as I tried not to shake and watched the shadows break over me like waves.
“They brought you such comfort, before. Even then you looked like her. You stared at them while your mother lay dying like they were the last touch of color in the world. I went back across the sea to get one for you.”
“For as long as that,” I said to the wind. I didn’t know what to think anymore. “You’ve been watching me for as long as that.” Against my wall, I dared not move. Asheroth stood mere inches from me now.
“Longer,” he said. He slipped the rose, thorns and all, into my hair, where he fussed over its placement for several long silent moments. “Your Logan, too, although you’re vastly more interesting. And by interesting, I mean troublesome. If you believe in Guardian angels, I’m the closest thing you have.”
Thorns dug into the delicate skin behind my ear. I told myself that explained the sudden rush of tears. I shook my head wildly, denying it. “Ethan will come,” I half hissed, half sobbed. As I said it, I realized I really believed it. “Not for me, but for Logan. He’s his real Guardian, not you. And I’ll fight you too,” I whispered. “I have shadows from the Dark Realms, and Light if I try really hard, and Ethan left me his armor. I probably won’t win, but I’ll die trying before I’ll let you take my brother’s soul.”
Asheroth’s diamond eyes blazed until they burned twin sunspots into my retinas. “He left you in worse danger than when he first saw you, Caspia. With powerful enemies and shadows you can barely control.” As he spoke he grew angrier. His voice climbed to a yell and twin voids of darkness began to unfurl on his back. “Did you mean for the shadows to crawl across you like that? We both know the answer is no. What Ethan'i'el showed you is forbidden to human descendents of Nephilim. It makes you very dangerous, to yourself and to the Realms. They will hunt you now, Caspia, both the Light and Dark. If the shadows you summon don't swallow you before you learn control." Between one breath and another he moved from right in my face to the middle of the courtyard, fully formed planes of darkness behind him like hungry broken windows with jagged glass teeth. “He taught you just enough to get you killed,” Asheroth spat, disgusted. He clenched and unclenched his fists, a vision of blood-red fury. “And guess what? I can’t even kill him for it because he’s already as good as dead.”
Asheroth’s beautiful pale face twisted into a murderous sneer. I looked down to find that he held both my hands in one of his, my wrists spanned easily by his encircling fingers. I realized the unintelligible stream of cursing and pleading came from me, demanding answers in between calling Asheroth all kinds of names. He simply held me until I calmed down enough to form coherent statements. “You mentioned trouble,” I pleaded. “Is Ethan in some kind of trouble? Is it because of me? Please. Tell me what you can.”
“E’than’i’el expected to be cast out to join the ranks of the Fallen.” Asheroth looked grim. “He wanted this. He could be with you then. But that’s not what happened. I don’t know what went wrong. I have long been banished from the Realms of Light. I know only that he has been sentenced to die instead. I can only assume your shadow stealing was discovered.”
"My shadow what? Why?"
Something like sanity flitted across Asheroth's face. "Because you are a weapon now. There was an army once, long ago, of Nephilim-human offspring. They were powerful enough to threaten the Realms. The war almost destroyed humankind."
"But you've seen for yourself," I protested, feeling sick and dizzy all at once. "I don't know what I'm doing. I'm no threat."
"I know that. Others of our kind don't."
I sank down to the cold bare ground. Asheroth still had my hands and I didn’t care. I actually wanted him to take me. There was nothing left; both the men I cared about were dying. I had nothing left. Nothing. Let some demon Nephilim come for me. I no longer cared.
When the vine-choked Virgin Mary statue shattered under the weight of Asheroth’s fists, I realized I had spoken out loud.
“I hope you didn’t kill the roses," I heard myself say. The sky started spitting icy rain again. I made no move to keep it off me.
He crouched in the middle of the wreckage, his leather-clad arms pulled tight around his knees. The black void had disappeared and he stared up at the rain-gray sky without blinking. Devoid of cruelty, his face free from lines of pain or insanity, he looked about my own age. If I met him without the forces of Darkness at his back and blood red leather armor, he looked like someone I might actually talk to. Then he turned to look at me with eyes like white Christmas lights, and the brief illusion of normalcy vanished.
“I am so bad at this, Caspia.” His whisper was so faint I wondered if I imagined it. “But I am trying. I know what I am. Dangerous and mad and lost. I hurt you. I will do it again, whether I want to or not. I have been lost for too long to come back easily. But there is no one else now. I am trying, and so must you. Terrible things are coming for you, and your brother too, and you are all I have left of her. You must let me guard you now, in my mad and terrible way.” Tears the exact color of his eyes fell into the wreckage at his feet. He did not brush them away.
“But then you understand,” I tried to explain. “You lost someone too. Logan won’t be with us much longer. Any day now, the doctors said. And then…”
I found myself at the foot of my brother’s hospital bed dangling from Asheroth’s fist. He held me several inches off the floor; his fingers twisted into the fabric of my jacket, shaking me like an unruly puppy. “For the last time, Caspia. I said I would guard you both. I do not guard corpses. Use your brain.” He let me go abruptly. I caught myself on the bedrail, stomach churning from the abrupt spatial displacement and face burning with anger.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” I yelled, rubbing my throat where my jacket, bunched in Asheroth’s hand, choked me. Yelling might restore some of my lost dignity. Failing that, it at least made me feel better. But when I whirled to confront him, Asheroth was gone. A hospital intern stood just inside the doorway, staring.
He looked afraid of me; they all did, the interns. I’d punched one of them the day they took Logan off those machines, and then clawed another one when someone stabbed me with a needle full of sedative cocktail. I eyed him speculatively. Had it been him? This one had big dark eyes fringed with lashes wasted on a boy. Too bad I couldn’t remember. My memories of that night were… fuzzy. “Dr. Ensforth and Dr. Hildebrand are on their way,” he blurted out.
I struggled not to grab him by his white jacket. “Both of them? Where?”
“They’re waiting for the rest of Mr. Chastain’s treatment team in their offices,” he managed to get out before I really did grab him by the white jacket. I ignored his protests and tried to ignore the icy fear crawling up my neck; so many doctors hadn’t gathered in Logan’s rooms since the night they pulled his tubes.
Please, I caught myself repeating, over and over, deep inside myself. Please. I wanted to ask but was afraid of the answer. Why didn’t the idiot intern just tell me? Was he afraid I’d break his neck? Shoot the messenger? I spared a quick glance at his pinched pale face and realized yes, that was probably exactly what he was thinking.
You have to stop this, said a clear, calm voice inside me. The anger, the running, and the hate: it’s killing you, and making everyone else miserable, and none of it will bring them back.
I stopped and turned my back on him. I could see the dead little garden with its smashed statue from the window. “It won’t bring either of them back. Not Logan. Not Ethan,” I whispered, and leaned my sweaty forehead against the cold glass.
“Miss Chastain? Are you… all right?”
“Just tell me.” I wondered if I sounded as tired as I felt. “Tell me what’s coming for us. I didn’t think I was strong enough, before.” I closed my eyes and let the glass carry most of my weight. “But now I don’t think it matters.”
Silence, for a long moment. And then the poor intern, whom I’d snapped at, grabbed, and probably punched or clawed several days before, took me gently by the shoulders and eased me back from the full-body chill of the winter window. “We all know how hard it’s been, and I know you doubt yourself for sticking it out sometimes.” My eyes popped open in surprise. “But it’s been worth it, Miss Chastain. It’s not bad news. Your brother seems to be a little better. His vitals are a little more stable. The treatment team is trying to understand it. I’m sure they can explain it better than me.” He gave me a lopsided smile like a badly wrapped gift. “It’s not a miracle, exactly. Just plain old good news.”
I whirled on him, right there at the foot of my brother’s bed, and caught him up in a tight, smothering hug. “That’s miracle enough for one lifetime,” I all but whispered. Asheroth’s creepy explanation made more sense now; I hadn’t trusted it before. I don’t guard corpses. Use your brain. But that meant that other dangerous things would be after us now, things even mad Asheroth considered a threat. I shuddered. I would worry about that later. My eyes felt heavy with unshed tears. The intern was actually halfway out the door before I realized he was leaving. “Hey!” I called back. “I don’t even know your name.”
“It’s Dylan,” he said, that lopsided smile still plastered on his face. “I’m the one you punched.”
I winced. “Ooh. Sorry.”
He shrugged, like girls hit him every day. Maybe, in his line of work, they did. “No big deal. You’ve got one wicked left hook.”
“That,” I told him, smiling, “is entirely my brother’s fault. He taught me.” My cheeks felt tight, and I wondered when the last time was that I smiled at anyone like that. “Dylan was my father’s name too,” I said, softly. “Mine’s Caspia.”
“I know. Caspia the coffee girl.” He looked as if he wanted to say more, but he didn’t. He left me like that, with his goofy gift of a smile, as I waited to meet my brother’s treatment team and hear what their esoteric definitions of “getting better” meant.
Anything that involved the words “Logan” and “not dying,” I told myself fervently. That’s what getting better meant. Anything at all.
Chapter Eighteen:
Life Sentence
“Not until you tell me what’s in it,” Logan grumbled from his hospital bed, then sealed his lips together. Tightly.
Even from my mud-colored vinyl cushioned chair in the corner, his entire bearing reminded me of a petulant four year old. Amberlyn apparently thought so, too. She sat right on the bed with him, holding a steaming bowl of soup prepared by Mrs. Alice’s own hands. “Snitches and snails and puppy dog tails,” she taunted, waving a steamy spoonful at him.
Half his mouth twitched, fighting a smile. “I’m pretty sure that’s not how it goes.”
Mr. Markov and Mrs. Alice exchanged looks of pure exasperation, which was quite a feat, considering one of them was blind. “Things that are good for you,” Mr. Markov announced in his thickly accented smoker’s growl. He managed to make even a simple statement sound like both a promise and a threat. “Which you will eat without any foolish whiny business. As a man should.”
Mrs. Alice snorted.
Amberlyn ducked her head, pretending to study the bowl of soup to hide her smile at their banter. The two had been spending a lot more time together since Logan’s accident. They were regular visitors to the hospital, of course. Only Logan and I knew they were working together to find the mysterious collector who’d managed to breach Mrs. Alice’s wards and was presumably still a danger. But working together seemed to draw them closer together in other ways, too. Mrs. Alice often took breakfast at the coffee shop, and Mr. Markov always held her arm protectively when they walked together. Which was often.
But then again, maybe there was just some kind of Whitfield wizard war going on I knew nothing about, and they had temporarily joined forces. Would they tell me? Would it be rude to ask? For about the hundredth time this week, I wished for some kind of supernatural rule book. If Ethan was here…
I collapsed in on myself. He wasn’t. Deal with it.
“Mushrooms,” Amberlyn said. “Shitake, I think.”
“Mmm,” Logan mumbled, refusing to open his mouth.
My best friend and my brother faced off across a snowy white expanse of hospital sheet. I didn’t know who to put my money on; Logan, with his sternly crossed arms, or Amberlyn, with her outrageously cute wrinkled nose. Then she lifted the spoon menacingly. “Your mouth or your lap. Your choice.”
He took the bowl from her.
“Mmph,” Logan said, through a mouth full of soup.
I wondered if there were any spells on the soup. If so, were they Light or Dark? Was there a Neutral setting? Did I even care? Mrs. Alice looked up suddenly and winked at me. I smiled weakly back.
“Tired, dear?” she asked. I shrugged, deliberately not answering.
Truthfully, I was exhausted. I had actually fallen asleep leaning against the elevator yesterday. While it was moving. Dylan the intern found me and quietly but firmly herded me back to good old room 213 and threatened to sedate me again if I didn’t get some sleep. “I already know you fight dirty,” he’d teased. “I have five older sisters and I have no problem hitting girls if it’s in self-defense. Or,” he shrugged, grinning. “You could just come quietly and get some sleep.”
I went quietly with Dylan. I slept. For what felt like five minutes.
“You should go rest, Cas,” Logan said quietly. “You know everything’s ok here.”
He was right. One of the reasons for Mr. Markov and Mrs. Alice’s visits had been to place layer after layer of wards on room 213. It was now impervious to attacks of all kinds, and even some casual visits. I’d discovered it kept out at least some Nephilim when Asheroth appeared in the threshold one day, furious but unable to enter. He beat his fists against an invisible barrier before resorting to pacing back and forth, giving me dark looks and muttering to himself. Eventually he realized this meant we were both safe and went away. Unfortunately, the wards were so good we also hadn’t been able to hear him. Only later did we realize he hadn’t been muttering at all. Asheroth’s aborted attempt to get into Logan’s room had been accompanied by a full force screaming fit. Some of the staff was still scandalized about the strange man with the horrible language who’d come to visit. It might have been funny if I wasn’t so exhausted from being terrified all the time.
“Maybe,” I conceded. I could call out for Asheroth if I felt threatened between here and home, which was warded even tighter than the hospital. He might come, and he might or might not still be mad about the wards on L
ogan's room. Either way, I had the shadows. I had Ethan’s jacket.
Ethan.
His name finally broke me. Almost two weeks had passed since Asheroth first delivered the news in the garden. I had done a good job not thinking about him. But suddenly I felt his loss like an intense physical pain. I made my hands into fists and dug my nails into the soft flesh of my palms, hard. I could feel the sharp bite holding the tears back. I wondered how long it would last, this temporary reprieve from my long overdue nervous breakdown.
I shot up out of my chair and practically lunged for my knapsack. I avoided looking at anyone while I dug around for the essentials: keys, wallet, and phone. “Right. So. I’m going to go grab a nap.” I slung the bag over one shoulder and hugged Logan tightly but carefully around his neck. “You be careful,” I whispered. “I don’t care what you say. It is some kind of miracle. It has to be.”
He pulled me even tighter to him. We clung to each other like that for several long moments. “Natural remission,” he insisted stubbornly. His words came out thick, coated with the shared but silent understanding between siblings. “The cancer is still there. Just because it’s going away on its own, without the drugs and treatment, doesn’t mean it’s a miracle. Just because the doctors can’t explain it doesn’t make it a miracle.” He meant: I don’t want to get my hopes up, or yours, only to have them snatched away. “My body still has to fight it. It’s going to take time and work to make me healthy again, Cas.” His dark eyes were serious, so serious, but they were all Logan and no imminent death. I felt the tears building. I wasn’t going to make it out without breaking down.
“But you’re not going to die,” I whispered against his scratchy cheek. He needed to shave. He needed to shave because he had hair again. He had hair again because he wasn’t being pumped full of cancer killing chemicals. I sobbed and rubbed my cheek against his, hoping his rough face would rub mine raw.