by Rebecca Main
One of them grows bold and creeps closer. It walks on all fours like some kind of primate; back hunched and knuckles digging into the ground for support. The hellspawn's eyes are black with a filmy yellow crust around them. It doesn’t look as if it sees, so much as it hears or smells.
“I could really use some kind of weapon,” I mutter to myself, shifting back onto my heels. I regret leaving the manor without my butterfly knife as my vulnerability becomes starkly apparent.
“Cal-e.” Luna stretches out her hand to me, eyes closed as her lips tremble. A sharp point presses grotesquely against the skin of her forearm, piercing it with aching slowness. I watch in muted horror as the bone-white object continues to grow and lengthen from her body in my direction. It reaches almost a foot in length before she snaps it off with a grunt of pain, eyes flaring a startling purple before returning to their glimmered state. “Kill.”
I take the bone stake, swallowing past the lump in my throat and turning my attention back to our enemy. And just in time. One of the hellspawn comes out from behind the tree we hide behind, launching itself at me with a feral snarl. I roll with the impact, worming a foot between its body and myself to kick it off. It flies overhead as I tumble safely back into a crouch. I barely have time to position myself better in front of Luna before another one launches itself at me.
And then another. And another.
I can feel the darkness in me crawling forth as I knock back the vermin, one after the other. It craves death. Death granted by my hands, and before I can help myself, I snap the neck of the next hellspawn and whip it across the forest floor. My breathing comes in sharp pants as the hellspawn collect around us, their needle-like teeth protruding in crooked lines from their unhinged jaws. The darkness dares to surge forward, but with a snarl of my own, I push it back down. I will not lose myself in it. Not today. Not now. In my mind, a picture of a never-ending night sky filled with bright starry dots fills my thoughts. Breathe and focus, I chant to myself. Don't let the darkness out.
“Come on, you filthy bastards,” I mutter as they drift forward.
A shot rings out, loud and clear through the forest, and a second later I flail backward as a jarring pain pierces my stomach. My hand darts to my stomach, but when I pull it away to see the damage, nothing is there. Still I ache. The bond between Keenan and I corrodes in agony.
“Keenan.” His name is a hoarse cry on my lips before they attack, spearing me to the ground as their teeth battle each other to gnash at my body. I shriek in pain. Trying—trying so damn hard—and failing to escape. Luna’s cries pierce the air behind me. Teeth capture a chunk of my left arm, tearing from it flesh and muscle. My scream seems to curdle as I jerk uncontrollably in pain, watching in horror as the beast devours my flesh. It triggers something inside of me, and my darkness surges to the surface. I knock a hellspawn off me and then another. But it is not enough. Not even with the Borealis helping to fuel my rage.
Pain racks through my body, to a point at which I think I may pass out, but at least Luna is no longer crying. The thought brings me little comfort knowing the reason why. A scream swells in my throat, one that scratches and aches upon its release.
Something gnaws at my ankle. Something bites deeply into my thigh. It's too much. A sob wracks my chest, jarring pain stemming from what seems like every part of my body as they continue their feast. I don't expect the one with its claws sunk deep into my belly to be torn away. It lets out a startled yelp, it's gnashing teeth coated in my flesh and blood. A second later, another is tossed from my body. Then another. And another. I scoot weakly backward, gasping for breath. Soft splashes of something wet land sporadically on me. Rain, I think dimly. I let my eyes drift shut, but am surprised when cool hands cradle my face gently.
“Callie? Callie, are you all right?” Nova’s voice is as achingly cool as her touch, and my eyes open to see her face half covered in blisters. How fast must she have run to find me with the threat of the sun looming behind the clouds? How did she find me at all? A wet sob bursts from my mouth in reply, and she cradles me to her chest, slipping her arms under me to pull me close. “Shh,” she murmurs rocking me. “Hush now. It’s all right. I can help you. You just need to drink my blood, and then we can be together. Everything will be okay.”
I shake my head weakly against her chest, forcing myself to push away from her. “No,” I manage to get out.
Nova lets out an angry growl, her gaze darting furtively around as the forest comes alive with the sound of gunfire and the pattering rain becomes heavier. Before my eyes, her skin seems to be smoothing over, her wounds healing. “We don’t have time. I can save you. Let me save you,” she begs.
“Can’t,” comes my blood-soaked response.
Nova’s eyes narrow on the fresh splatter of blood across my chin and cheeks, her eyes slipping into crimson as her nostrils flare. “But….” She must read the desperate plea in my eyes because she lets out a growl of frustration, angry tears welling in her eyes. “Fine, then take these. It will help you heal faster,” she says, carefully lying me back down to take off her bracers. “They don’t work for me anymore anyway, and he only let me keep them to be mean. To remind me of my old life and what I’d lost.” The bracers unlock around her wrists with the correct pressure from her fingertips, and then she is slipping them onto my forearms above the other pair. The fit is tight. Uncomfortable. Yet they pale in comparison to my other injuries.
Nova helps me activate them, her eyes watching with barely veiled envy as my back bends from the culminated power. “Shhh!” Nova casts another harried look around us, her hand slapping over my mouth. “They’re coming, and I can’t… I can’t stay. Just tell them I’m sorry. I’m sorry for everything,” she says to me in a rush, hand slipping away. “He made me tell him everything. Everything about the Wardens. Everything about the relics.”
My hand reaches out to grasp hers tightly, the pain in my body dulling ever so slightly. “Everything?” I gasp.
She nods her head regretfully, beginning to stand. “He knows about the blade. I’m so sorry, Callie. Please don’t tell me you have it on you.”
“No,” I rasp, pulling myself to my elbows shakily. “Irina—” Nova’s hand slaps over my mouth once more in a panic.
“Didn’t you just hear what I said?” Animalistic terror frets about her words. “I have to tell him everything, Callie. Oh no.” She shifts uncontrollably backward, landing clumsily on her butt. “He ordered me to… and the border is down in patches… I have to—”
“Don’t.” My own panic rises with the realization of what I’ve just done. “It’s not with her. It’s… it’s….” But my harried excuse is no use. The tears spill forth from her eyes as she shuts them. When they open, they are a familiar brown.
“Tell my sisters I love them,” she whispers raggedly, then is off in the blink of an eye. The sound of gunfire increases mere seconds after she spirits away, leaving me to deal with the aftermath.
I can’t feel him, I think brokenly, trying and failing to feel Keenan through the bond. Except, there is nothing there.
It’s so disturbingly bare that it rouses a pain deep in my heart. One I never knew I could feel. I can’t breathe, I think weakly, the pain in my body once more overwhelming me. I can’t breathe. Luna’s piteous moan is the only thing keeping me from losing control. I pull myself toward her, dragging my lower half with labored breaths.
“Luna,” I croak weakly, but her slumped form makes no response. Her body is littered with bite marks and angry gashes, but I can hardly tell if any are life-threatening. She’s far too covered in blood. “Please,” I beg, “please, wake up.”
“I’ve got another one!” a male voice shouts, one that is vaguely familiar.
A white-hot pain spears through my middle back, as the military-issued boot makes impact. I grit my teeth against the pain, collapsing into the dirt without protest.
“Well, well, well. What do we have here?” A fistful of my hair is bunched in an angry fis
t before I’m yanked roughly upward onto my knees. “The little bitch, traitor,” the veteran Stellar Warrior all but snarls. “Just what should I do with you?”
A rather vicious yank and my head snaps back. Throat exposed. His hot breath skirts over the delicate flesh, and my heart thunders in my ears.
“Haven’t got anything to say for yourself?” He forces my head to turn toward him. Devin Watercress, second in his class only to my brother and one to hold a grudge. I hock the blood and phlegm clogging my airway and spit it in his face.
“Fuck you,” I snarl back. He releases me in disgust, angrily wiping at his face before eyeing me with fury. I steel myself for the knockout blow that is certain to come my way when Wyatt appears out of the blue.
“Calliope.” He grimaces at the sight of me, stepping between me and the other warrior. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Watercress?”
“Orders are—"
“I know what the fucking orders are, you moron. So, I’ll ask you again; what the hell are you doing?” I can’t see Devin’s face, but I’m hopeful that it’s scared shitless. It isn’t wise to get on Wyatt’s bad side. “Get back with the others, now. I’ll take care of Calliope Sawyer.”
I watch Devin’s retreating figure with relief but find myself unconsciously stiffening when Wyatt crouches down next to me.
“You’ve really done it this time, Calliope,” he tells me, “but don’t worry. I’ll get you out of it.” He stands. Before I can make my reply, he reaches for his semiautomatic and smashes the butt of the gun against my forehead. A bursting pain eclipses all others, and then I am pulled into blissful darkness.
Chapter 19
Cross Your Heart and Hope to Die
Another day, another holding cell.
My body radiates an ache so deep, I’m not sure where one pain begins and another ends. Flashes of gnarled teeth and rotting breath steal into the forefront of my mind, and the urge to vomit is almost impossible to ignore. Not that there is anything in my stomach to purge. A few measured breaths resolve the minor issue, but it does little to calm my shaking nerves.
I’m back in Alaska. Back at the Banks Facility, tucked away in a cell meant for the worst of our kind. Traitors. Apostates. Thieves.
Check, check, and check.
The only balm to my wounds is that I can once again feel Keenan through the bond. He didn’t die the other day, and the relief is tremendous. Even with two thousand miles between us, the bond is still there. As weak as it is, it gives me something to hold on to. It anchors me.
I’m not sure what day it is, or how long I’ve been here. No one has come, at least not while I’ve been awake. Thankfully I’ve been washed and put in new clothes. My wounds tended to with baseline effort.
A door opens and slams closed in the distance, and my eyes watch the long, poorly lit hallway dispassionately. The footfalls that sound are heavy. Masculine. My hands curl into fists at my side as anxiety builds in my stomach. I hope it’s not Wyatt. Or worse, my father.
I suck in a sharp breath of relief when the distant figure passes under one of the working hallway lights. “JJ.” I force myself to my feet, wincing in pain as I shuffle toward the bars of my cell. “You’re alive. You made it.” Tears blossom in my vision, and I happily blink them away.
When JJ stands before my cell bars, we reach out to each other, hands grasping onto one another as tightly as possible.
“What happened to you?” he asks, voice holding a distinct tremor. I give him the CliffsNotes version, inwardly pleased when I’m able to keep my composure the whole way through.
“What are they going to do with me?”
JJ has trouble holding my gaze, swallowing uncomfortably. “You’ll go before the Council. The full Council.”
My heart gives an unsteady lurch. “What?” I gasp. “The full Council? Are you sure, JJ?”
“They called them all in. The Peruvians, Argentinians, Estonians, Spaniards, Mongolians, Botswana, Moroccan, and Australians. All of the Councils, from all over the world.”
“I’m in that much trouble?” I whisper.
JJ visibly swallows. “It’s not just you, but there is a theory….”
I take in a shaky breath and feel my legs begin to cramp. The bite marks strewn across my body throb in tandem. “Just tell me.”
“Your record was reviewed in full, Cal. You know you have marks against you for pursuing a career with the Stellar Warriors against the recommendation of the Alaskan Council, not to mention the wendigo incident. Now this? They think you’re—” He cuts himself off with a shake of his head before barreling on. “—cursed. They think the root of all your disobedience comes from the darkness inside of you, and it’s been working its will upon you all this time.”
I pull myself from JJ’s hold and slowly limp back toward the long stone bench I’m allotted. “They honestly think I’m cursed?” I give a hoarse laugh. They’d certainly hit the nail on the head.
“They think you should have been exiled when the Church Hill wendigo incident happened,” he continues.
“Maybe I should have been.”
“No,” he tells me vehemently. “No, Calliope. Don’t ever say that, do you understand? Our family has always been held to a higher standard because we’re one of the Founding Four. There are others who’ve made the same mistakes, worse some still, and they’re still with us today. You shouldn’t be treated any differently.”
“What do you think they’re gonna do to me, JJ?” I ask after a long pause. “We both know this trial is all for show. It’s the punishment the Council is interested in.” It’s about putting me in my place, I think, once and for all. “Nothing more.”
JJ directs his gaze to the concrete floor. His jaw working silently, as he works out how to break the news to me. “There are… a few options. Exile, which would be the most lenient. Execution”—my heart gives a most painful lurch in my chest, chin dipping to my chest as I take in a shaky breath—“obviously not as lenient, but quick.”
Our eyes meet through a shimmering gloss of tears. I give him a weak smile. “Obviously.”
“Or….”
JJ takes too long to respond, the discomfort on his face showing. “Or what, JJ?” I whisper.
“There has been a third proposal. An option for you to stay.” Again, he stalls.
“Just tell me, all right? Just, tell me.”
JJ’s gaze turns stony. “They’ll bring in the Occult Scholars to perform an exorcism. They’ll begin with the Purification Rites, then the Absolution Mantle, and finish it with a Purging.”
I feel as if the floor has been pulled out from under me. And though I am seated, I find myself slumping forward, almost unable to catch myself as JJ cries out my name.
“They haven’t….” My head moves dumbly from side to side. I cast my gaze back toward JJ and lick my lips. “They haven’t performed an exorcism in over a hundred years. And after the last one,” my words stutter along as I feel my body begin to tremble, “they deemed it too cruel. JJ—”
“Hey, hey.” JJ drops to a knee and reaches out to me. “Shhh, it’s going to be all right, Cal. The exorcism—”
“All right, JJ?” My wretched laughter echoes against the cold concrete walls as tears fall freely down my face. “It’s not going to be all right. They’ll waterboard me, whip and beat me without giving me a single means to protect myself, and then they’ll….” The words are almost too much for me to say. For men, purging means taking poison to cleanse the body. If the man survives, the darkness is said to be rid and he can rejoin the community with all past sins forgotten and forgiven. For a woman…. “Who's the man that petitioned for the exorcism?”
I hardly recognize my voice, as flat and detached as it goes. We both know I know who it is. I just have to hear it. I have to.
“Wyatt,” JJ says lowly.
“So, after I’m ‘purified’ and ‘absolved,’ they’ll let him rape me for the Purging? And if his seed doesn’t take—if I don’t get preg
nant—then it will somehow prove the darkness inside me can’t be purged? How the fuck is any of that right?” My hand slaps angrily against the stone. A miserable sob wrenches from my chest at the barbaric unfairness.