by Kristie Cook
“But we’re all going down,” I said. I glanced over at Brock, who, for once, wasn’t pacing, but sat with his knees drawn tightly to his chest, his eyes glazed over as he stared at the flames. “In a few days, we’ll all be too weak to travel.”
“She’s right,” Bex said, straightening to sit up on her own rather than leaning on Hayden, as though to prove herself. “I’m doing a lot better. I can walk, and I think I can even run. And this tug in our guts has gotten crazy strong. I don’t think we can fight it much longer.”
“You can’t defend yourself with a broken arm,” Hayden said.
“We’ll have to do it for her,” I said. “Isn’t it better to have one of us a little weak than all of us? Right now, we can look out for her. But the way we’re going, I can’t say we’ll be able to do that in a few days. Not even you, Hayden. Once the soul-sickness sets in, you’ll go down fast. Both of you. Do you really want to risk Bex’s soul after all of this?”
Hayden didn’t answer me. He continued dragging the point of his dagger through the dirt.
“What if your mates finally come looking for you and you’re gone?” he asked. “Waiting here for them to get us off this world is a lot safer than searching for a Gate, especially since we’re not exactly sure where it is.”
“Instinct will guide you,” I said. “And if Jeric and Asia figure it out, they’ll be able to come to us wherever we are. We were able to find you.”
“Have you even tried to contact them?” he demanded. His tone raised my hackles.
“Every minute of the day! I’m constantly reaching out for Jeric. And I’m getting no response. I can’t feel anything from him except the pain in his soul. However you were able to send us messages, it’s not working for me. Which means there’s a good chance the Book’s not working for them at all, and they’ll never get here. We have to go, Hayden. Sooner, not later.”
“Jacquelena’s our leader,” Brock said, his words surprising me. His eyes had focused beyond the fire, straight onto Hayden. “And you know she’s right. We need to go before we’re all taken by the Darkness. Including your Rebethannah.”
We all watched Hayden expectantly. He stopped drawing in the dirt, but gave no response. Instead, he rose to his feet and took over Brock’s usual pacing, his hands on his hips.
“We can leave in the morning,” Bex said when Hayden still didn’t concede. “That gives us another night of rest and food, and you and I can do that thing with our souls to make us stronger, Hayden. And then we need to make like a tree and leave.” He turned his head to look over his shoulder at her and opened his mouth, presumably to protest again, but she held up a hand and cocked a brow. “No arguin’ with me now. Just shut that trap of yours and listen. We don’t have a choice. I feel it, and I know you do, too. We’ve been through too much to get here only to lose each other all over again. Besides, Leni and Brock risked themselves—and Asia and Jeric, too—for us. We owe them, Hayden. We’re not gonna let them down. We all need this, and you know it.”
When a Southern woman was as serious as she was, a smart man didn’t argue with her. Hayden may not know Southern, but he was obviously a smart man. Finally, we’d be on our way.
We packed up and headed out at first light the next morning. We followed the pull of their souls in the direction of the Gate, moving slowly at first as Bex pushed through the ache of her healing wounds. After a while, she must have grown accustomed to the pain because she began to move faster. She was the only one not carrying a bag of supplies—Hayden carried hers for her. Mine was strapped to my back, over my raggedy sweater that was too tight across my boobs, and my knife hung from the belt that scrunched up the waist of the black pants that were too big for me. At least my boots fit fairly well, and their fit was more important than anything. We had a long walk ahead of us.
I mentally snorted at myself. Barely more than a year ago, I’d been auditioning to be a ballerina in New York City. Only a few months ago, I was dancing on stage in Italy. And here I was now, trekking through some post-apocalyptic world, prepared to fight alien creatures so I could get home to a man whose soul I shared. Since meeting Jeric, life had become so weird, but I couldn’t imagine living without him. Well, I could since I was doing it now. But this wasn’t living. This was struggling to survive until we could be together again.
We’d been traveling for what felt like a few hours over the gray, desert-like terrain when a forest appeared in the distance ahead of us.
“We don’t want to go in there,” Hayden said. “We need to go around.”
“How big is it?” I asked. “Won’t going around take longer?”
“Yeah, but trust me, we don’t want to be in that for—ahhhh.”
All three of my traveling companions screamed and clutched their heads as they fell to the ground around me. I spun in a circle, my stomach clenching with panic. Their faces twisted and their bodies thrashed as though they were in a great deal of pain, but I had no idea what caused it. I had no idea what to do.
A woman’s laugh carried across the land. My head whipped in the direction it came from. Four figures emerged from the forest, quickly headed straight for us. My extra sharp eyesight gained from the Forging must have been fading—I could barely make them out from here. Three appeared to be huge monsters, and the other quite smaller, possibly human, but I couldn’t be sure. All of them seemed to be gliding rather than running.
“Come on,” I said, tugging at Hayden. He yanked his arm out of my grip and rolled away, moaning. “Someone’s coming, Hayden! Please get up!”
“Noooo,” Bex cried, her eyes squeezed shut as she, too, rolled on the ground. “Sissssssy …”
“Asia, please,” Brock begged.
“What’s wrong with you guys?” I demanded, my neck prickling with fear. My heart raced at the thought of having to fight alone. I’d never be able to do it. “Get up!”
More laughter from the woman. Then I was suddenly not in the gray desert, but sitting in a motel room, on my cell phone, listening to my daddy tell me he didn’t have a daughter. Hearing him threaten to call the police if I bothered him or my mother again. And then I was on a street corner in Juneau, Alaska, facing my mama who had no recognition of my face at all. My heart broke as it had the other times I’d gone through the complete rejection by my own parents.
“Lovely memories, yes?” a woman said from nearby, her voice as icy as the nights on Erde.
I jerked out of the visions and refocused on my surroundings. Brock, Bex, and Hayden still lay on the gray, sandy ground, whimpering. The four figures stood a few yards away from us. The three big ones looked like gigantic dogs, but with three heads each the size of a small car. Drool hung from fangs longer than my arm, and eyes rolled wildly in their sockets. They all sat on their haunches, growling and snapping at the air. In front of them stood an average-sized woman with big, snow-white hair that reached her butt, streaked with thick chunks of jet black, perfectly clear skin as white as her hair, and eyes blacker than night. She wore a shiny, black, one-piece suit that appeared to be painted over her voluptuous body, and black, stiletto boots that reached her thighs. She looked like a villainess straight out of a comic book. She was an evil nemesis all right, but very real.
Although I couldn’t remember ever seeing her in physical form, my soul recognized her black one instantaneously.
“Enyxa,” I breathed.
Her red, full lips quirked up into a smirk. “Jacquelena. It’s been a long time.”
“Not long enough,” I said, pushing down my fear and putting on my mask of courage.
The creatures snarled.
“Watch it,” Enyxa warned as she reached up and raked her long fingernails down the mangy neck of one of the monsters. “My hellhounds don’t take well to a challenge. I wouldn’t try to run, either, although they’d love the chase.”
I swallo
wed hard against the lump in my throat and tensed my thigh muscles to keep my knees from knocking together. Trust me, I wasn’t running. Especially as my friends still lay on the ground, helpless. “What did you do to them?”
She glanced down at them, and her grin widened. “Ah, just showing them the way.”
I cocked my head. “To where?”
“To Darkness, my dear.” She gave a hand signal to her hounds, then began walking a circle around us, while the monsters remained seated. “That’s why you’re here, and what I do—escort souls to the Dark. By forcing them to relive all of the pain they suffered and the hurt they caused others, physical and emotional.” She stopped across the circle from me, and her dark gaze swept over the three people on the ground between us. “With as much pain and suffering you’ve all been through, your souls will go quickly. Hayden’s been a difficult one, but with Bex here in my world, they’ll both go fast.”
They all cried out. She must have given them another bad memory.
“Except for me,” I said, trying to pull her attention away from them. “My life hasn’t been so bad, and I have no loved ones to really care about. You have little to use against me, don’t you?”
She looked up at me and tilted her head as she studied my face. The smile returned as she continued her walk, coming closer.
“Oh, Jacquelena, you poor dear. You had no real love in your life this time around, did you? Did you ever think there’s a reason for that? Maybe because last time you caused the fire that killed your parents, pushed away the one man who did love you, your so-called Pops, and led your best friend to be murdered? Even in this life, you’ve rejected Theodethan, the person besides Jeremicah who cares about you most, just as your parents denied you.”
My stomach fell, and tears stung my eyes. I’d never thought about things in that way, but I could see the truth in them. Feel the truth. And it hurt so much. The realization of how horrible I’d been as Jacey and Leni sent my emotions crashing over me in a tidal wave. She didn’t have to make me relive it all to Darken my soul. I could already feel it tainting.
Enyxa stopped in front of me and raised her hand near my head. I flinched as she drew a fingernail down my cheek.
“Don’t worry, darling, you have lifetimes of pain and hurt to relive,” she drawled. “But there’s more from this one than you realize.”
White-hot pain suddenly seared through my head, blinding me. When the brightness faded, several memories ran through my mind—pushed through it by Enyxa. Memories of me shoving my fist in my mouth to stick my finger down my throat, making myself purge all the calories I’d eaten behind my mother’s back. Memories of her forcing me to dance on a stress fracture in my foot. Memories of learning I didn’t get into a company or earn a part in a production, and other memories of girls’ faces full of hurt when they saw I was awarded a part over them. Memories of sitting in the corner of a dark closet where my mother had locked me up when I was little, my punishment for not mastering the pirouette yet.
“Besides, I have my own special plans for you, Jacquelena,” Enyxa said, wiping out the visions. She gripped my chin in her hand now as she looked down her nose at me, her eyes such a deep black, I didn’t know if it ever ended. “Plans that have been in the works for eons. After all, you’re the cause of all of everyone’s pain. Too bad you couldn’t figure out all the ways to use that Book of yours, which is pretty stupid of you, considering you created it.” She let me go and strode over to her hellhounds. “Have fun trying to escape the Dark worlds. As I said, my babies love a good hunt, and they always find their prey. So … I leave you with this until next time.”
She snapped her fingers, and she and her monsters disappeared into thin air, and my surroundings vanished once again. I was in Mason’s apartment, lying on my back, looking up at him as he hovered over me, a shard of glass carving into my breast. Except it wasn’t mine, of course. I was reliving Bex’s memory. Reliving her physical pain and her emotional hopelessness. Then I was transported again, now sitting in the driver’s seat of a car at twilight, witnessing an accident—a truck T-boning a small sedan in front of me. My heart buckled along with the bodies of the vehicles, folding in on itself just like the metal of the cars, becoming something much smaller and crushed until it was no longer recognizable. No way could anyone have survived that crash or the fire that exploded. A female wailed “Nooo! Oh, God, no!” next to me. She sounded like Asia, but the memory vanished before I could know for sure, leaving only agony in my heart.
Somehow, I was still standing when I returned to the present. Not for long, though. I fell to my knees and bawled. Ugly, snotty, gut-wrenching sobs tore through me until I no longer knew why I cried. With one arm held tightly against my stomach, I scrubbed at the wetness on my face. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d sobbed so hard. Probably never—my mother wouldn’t have allowed it. My eyes burned, and my skin felt gritty from the sand that had stuck to the tears. I tried breathing deep breaths, but the air hitched all the way in and all the way out. My heart and soul weighed so heavily with the spots of Darkness Enyxa had left, I didn’t know if I could even stand and support their weight.
“Fucking bitch,” Hayden groaned from my right. He rolled onto his knees and braced the weight of his upper body with his hands on his thighs. His head hung between his arms.
Bex and Brock came around, too, also rolling to their knees.
“What the hell was that?” Brock asked.
“The worst thing ever,” Bex said through heavy breaths.
“Enyxa paid us a visit,” I explained. “She told me we’d be reliving every pain we’d ever experienced and we’d ever caused. From all of our lifetimes.”
“That’s what she does,” Hayden said. “Leads us into the Darkness.”
“At this rate, we’ll be Dark in no time,” Brock said as his hand pressed against his chest.
I assumed the accident had been his memory, but I didn’t know what exactly happened that hurt him so much. He hadn’t actually been in the accident. Had he and Asia known the people in one of the vehicles? Or had they somehow caused the wreck? They’d never spoken much about how they’d met. I didn’t know their story. I had a feeling Enyxa was going to make sure I relived it myself. She said I’d caused all their pain. Had I been the reason for the accident? I didn’t know how that was possible, but my stomach tightened anyway at the thought.
Bex hiccupped with another ragged breath. “As if living through it once hadn’t been bad enough.”
My stomach heaved with the reminder of what Bex had just gone through. Again.
“Brock’s right,” I said. “I can’t remember everything about all of my lives, but I know they haven’t been paradise. We’ll never survive the Darkness if we don’t get out of here.”
Nobody argued any more. We all pushed to our feet and stumbled a few steps before taking off in the direction of the Gate—but staying far away from the forest.
Chapter 4
I leaned my elbows on the wooden conference table in the small meeting room, dropped my head between my arms, and rubbed my hands over the back of it. The news kept getting worse and worse.
“You don’t have to make a decision today, Jeric,” Asia said from across the table.
“So far, the Guardians have been able to protect all the Gates,” Yoshi agreed from my right, “but if the souls from the Dark worlds grow any more persistent in opening them, I don’t know how long we’ll be able to keep the Gates sealed.”
“And if sealing them doesn’t keep the Lakari out, our only option is collapsing all of the Gates?” I clarified. “We’re sure there’s no other way?”
“Not that anyone knows of,” Melinda said quietly. She and Uri sat on the other side of the table by Asia.
I banged my fists on the table, making everyone jump. “There has to be, damn it! There must be a way for us to pass thr
ough or we wouldn’t be able to help the Broken and the Lost.”
“He’s right,” Asia said. “Why would the angels, or whoever they are, give us this job without alternative passages for times like this? If God and the universe work in mysterious ways to help us with other problems, why not with this?”
Nobody could provide an answer.
“I can’t believe there are no records,” I said. “Nothing? Nowhere?”
“If there are, nobody remembers,” Uri said. “The information got lost between generations somewhere along the way.”
“Well, then, we need to fucking remember,” I growled. “Aren’t there hypnotists who do age regression? Maybe they can help. Or, here’s an idea—maybe Leni wasn’t the only one smart enough to create something to leave clues. Maybe there are more journals … somewhere.”
“There are items, but Leni’s not the only one who’s forgotten what they do or how to use them,” Tasha, Yoshi’s other half, said, her English strong, though edged with a Japanese accent. “It’s the curse of the Guardians. No matter how hard we try to keep the information flowing generation to generation, it gets lost or jumbled up. It’s part of our test in each life to figure everything out.”
I shook my head. “I don’t buy that. If guarding the Gate and helping the Darkening, Lost, and Broken souls are so important, why wouldn’t we be armed with as much knowledge as possible? Why make our jobs more difficult than they already are?”
Again, silence answered my question.
“It seems to happen after we go to another world,” Yoshi finally said.
“What does?” I demanded.
“The forgetting.”
I cocked my head toward him. I’d never heard a plausible theory that explained why the Guardians couldn’t seem to keep their shit together when it came to remembering past lives.